Every Engineering Course in the Philippines, Listed

TL;DR: CHED prescribes engineering degrees through a batch of memorandum orders issued in 2017 — CMO 86 sets the requirements common to all of them, and CMO 87 through CMO 101 cover fifteen individual programmes. Two later additions are CMO 21, s. 2021 for naval architecture and CMO 16, s. 2025 for manufacturing engineering. The single most consequential fact about this list is that not every engineering degree ends in a licence. The Professional Regulation Commission runs boards for eleven engineering fields plus naval architecture. Computer, industrial, materials, ceramic and manufacturing engineering have no board at all. Marine engineering is licensed by MARINA, not the PRC.

This is a routing page. Each programme below has its own guide on this site with the unit breakdown, specialisation tracks and exam structure. What this page does is show you the whole map at once, with the CHED order behind each degree and a straight answer on licensure.

The Order That Sits Above All of Them

CHED Memorandum Order No. 86, series of 2017, "Policies, Standards and Guidelines for Requirements Common to All Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Bachelor of Engineering Technology Programs," was adopted by Commission en banc Resolution No. 788-2017 dated 24 October 2017 and took effect from Academic Year 2018-2019. It applies to every HEI, public or private, offering these programmes.

Three of its rules matter to applicants more than the rest.

Four years is the design. CMO 86 states that the curricular design for all BS in Engineering and Bachelor of Engineering Technology programmes "shall be aligned with the revised basic education program (K-12) and shall have a four-year program of study." Whether you finish in four is a different question — the unit loads in the individual orders are heavy enough that five years is unremarkable.

Non-STEM graduates need a bridging programme. CMO 86 is explicit: "Prior to admission to any BS in Engineering and Bachelor of Engineering Technology program, non-STEM Strand Grade 12 graduates shall take a bridging program to be designed and provided by the HEI." That bridging programme is the school's to design, so its length and cost vary. Ask before you apply. If you are still choosing a strand, our guide to the right strand for engineering covers what the sequence actually buys you.

Faculty teaching professional courses must be licensed. CMO 86 requires that faculty members teaching professional courses be registered engineers with valid licences. It also sets a floor of at least 35 percent full-time faculty.

The 2017 Batch, Programme by Programme

CHED issued these in a single run. The order numbers are worth knowing because school websites, accreditation documents and CHED regional correspondence all cite them by number.

Two additions since:

CMO 16, s. 2025 is new enough that few schools have a graduating cohort under it. If a university advertises BS Manufacturing Engineering, ask which curriculum year it is running and whether the programme has government authority to operate.

The Licence Question, Answered Plainly

The Professional Regulation Commission publishes its list of Professional Regulatory Boards. Reading it against the CHED list gives you the answer most course-selection guides talk around.

Engineering fields with a PRC board: Aeronautical, Agricultural and Biosystems, Chemical, Civil, Electrical, Electronics, Geodetic, Mechanical, Metallurgical, Mining, Sanitary. Naval Architecture also has its own board.

Engineering degrees with no PRC board at all: computer engineering, industrial engineering, materials engineering, ceramic engineering, manufacturing engineering.

That second group is not a lesser group. Industrial engineers run operations across manufacturing, logistics, banking and BPO. Computer engineers move into hardware, embedded systems and increasingly into software roles. What it means is narrower and more practical: there is no exam you must pass to work, no seal you can affix, and no title protected by statute. Career progression is negotiated with employers rather than gated by a board.

Two frequent confusions are worth clearing up.

Computer engineering is not electronics engineering. They are different CHED orders and different outcomes. Only BSECE leads to the electronics engineer licence under RA 9292. If your goal is the ECE licence, the degree has to be the electronics one.

Marine engineering is not mechanical engineering, and it is not a PRC profession. BS Marine Engineering trains officers in charge of an engineering watch. Their certification comes from the Maritime Industry Authority under Republic Act No. 10635, which made MARINA the single maritime administration for STCW purposes. That is a completely separate credentialing system from the PRC. Read our BS Marine Engineering guide before assuming the two are interchangeable, and see the maritime courses guide for how deck and engine tracks differ.

If you want the wider picture across all professions rather than engineering alone, our list of courses with board exams covers it.

Engineering Technology Is a Separate Track

CMO 86 covers "BS in Engineering and Bachelor of Engineering Technology" together, which leads people to assume they are variants of the same thing. They are not. CHED issued CMO 20, series of 2025, Policies and Guidelines for the Bachelor of Engineering Technology (BET) Program as its own document.

A BET is an applied, practice-oriented degree. It does not by itself qualify a graduate to sit an engineer licensure examination, because the licensure laws name a BS in the specific engineering discipline. If a school offers you "Bachelor of Engineering Technology major in Civil" and you intend to become a registered civil engineer, that is the wrong programme for the goal. Confirm the exact degree title on the diploma before you enrol.

Fields Taught Here With No CHED Programme Standard

A handful of engineering specialisations are taught in Philippine universities without a dedicated CHED memorandum order. Petroleum engineering, biomedical engineering and environmental engineering do not appear in CHED's published list of engineering PSGs.

That does not make the programmes illegitimate. It means the curriculum is set by the institution and approved through CHED's regional processes rather than benchmarked against a national programme standard, so two schools' versions of the same degree name can differ substantially. Since 2023, applications for authority to operate engineering degrees run through the procedures in CMO 5, s. 2023.

For these programmes, ask three questions before enrolling: does the programme have government authority or recognition, what is the actual course list, and what did the last three graduating batches do afterwards.

Environmental engineering deserves a specific warning. It is often confused with sanitary engineering, which is a licensed profession under RA 1364 and does have a CHED order, CMO 98, s. 2017. If your interest is water supply, sewerage and public health engineering with a licence at the end, sanitary engineering is the programme with the statutory path.

Choosing Between Them

A few honest filters.

Start from the licence, not the subject. The heaviest consequence of this choice is whether your work will be legally gated. Civil, electrical, mechanical, electronics, chemical and geodetic engineering all have statutory scopes of practice you cannot enter without registration. That makes the board exam a fixed cost of the career, not an optional extra.

Check which specialisation tracks a school actually runs. Several of the 2017 orders require students to complete a specialisation, and in civil engineering the track is printed on the transcript and diploma. A school can only give you tracks it staffs.

Look at the school before the field. Faculty credentials, laboratories and industry linkage are what CMO 86 spends most of its length on, and they vary enormously. Our roundup of the best engineering schools in the Philippines is a starting point, and the engineer salary picture is worth reading before you commit five years.

Do not pick on scarcity alone. Ceramic, materials and metallurgical engineering are offered by very few institutions. Small programmes can be excellent and closely tied to industry, but they also mean fewer schools to transfer between if something goes wrong, and a thinner local job market outside a handful of employers.

Sources

• Commission on Higher Education — 2017 CHED Memorandum Orders (full list of issuances)
• CHED — CMO No. 86, s. 2017, Policies, Standards and Guidelines for Requirements Common to All Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Bachelor of Engineering Technology Programs (PDF)
• CHED — CMO No. 92, s. 2017, PSG for the BS Civil Engineering Program (PDF)
• Commission on Higher Education — 2021 CHED Memorandum Orders, including CMO No. 21, s. 2021 on BS Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering
• Commission on Higher Education — 2025 CHED Memorandum Orders, including CMO No. 16 on BS Manufacturing Engineering and CMO No. 20 on the Bachelor of Engineering Technology
• Commission on Higher Education — 2023 CHED Memorandum Orders, including CMO No. 5, s. 2023 on applications for authority to operate engineering degrees
• Professional Regulation Commission — List of Professional Regulatory Boards
• Supreme Court E-Library — Republic Act No. 10688, Metallurgical Engineering Act of 2015
• MARINA STCW Administration Office — Republic Act No. 10635