What Nursing School Actually Costs in the Philippines

TL;DR: The published figure most people quote for nursing school is the first-year figure, and it is the least representative one. UST's own Schedule of Fees for First Term A.Y. 2026-2027 shows full payment without NSTP or ROTC at ₱74,593 in first year rising to ₱146,143 in fourth year — a near doubling driven almost entirely by Related Learning Experience charges, which reach ₱97,740 by fourth year. Tuition at state universities is covered under RA 10931; the clinical costs are not.

Why nursing is priced differently

Nursing is not an expensive degree because of tuition. It is expensive because of everything the degree needs that a lecture-only programme does not: hospital placements, affiliation agreements, duty uniforms, equipment, insurance, and supervised clinical hours.

Those costs do not appear in first year, which is why first-year figures mislead so badly. They arrive in second year and grow every year after.

One school publishes its schedule of fees in enough detail to show exactly how. The rest of this guide is built around that table, plus the rules that apply everywhere.

The UST College of Nursing schedule of fees

UST publishes a separate Schedule of Fees for each college for each term. The College of Nursing table for First Term, Academic Year 2026-2027 breaks down as follows. UST runs two terms a year, so these are per-term figures.

The totals

Instalment plans cost ₱1,000 more than full payment, structured as a down payment plus four monthly payments from September to December.

Where the money goes

Read the bottom row again. Tuition falls across the four years as laboratory units drop out. What rises is the "additional fees, if applicable" line, and within it:

By fourth year, RLE alone is more than three and a half times the lecture tuition. That is the actual shape of nursing school cost, and no summary range communicates it.

The same table lists a ₱750 penalty for late enrolment and a $50 out-of-state fee for foreign students. First year carries NSTP or ROTC at ₱2,939, a ₱380 drug testing fee and a ₱2,188 laboratory charge that later years do not.

What this tells you about other schools

Two transferable lessons.

First, ask for the fee schedule for every year level, not just first year. A school that quotes you a first-year figure has told you the least useful number it has.

Second, ask specifically what RLE and affiliation will cost. These are the line items that separate a manageable nursing budget from an unmanageable one, and they depend on the school's hospital partners, not on its tuition rate.

What we removed from this guide

The earlier version of this page carried per-semester tuition ranges for seven named schools, board exam passing rate ranges for each, graduate salary figures for local and overseas work, review course prices, and equipment prices down to specific stethoscope models.

None of those were traceable to a school publication, a PRC release, or a government issuance. They have been removed rather than restated as broader ranges. Where a figure below appears, it comes from a source named in the same sentence.

The schools themselves are still worth shortlisting, and each publishes or will send its own schedule of fees: Silliman University, Centro Escolar University, Our Lady of Fatima University, Far Eastern University, Southwestern University PHINMA, and among state institutions UP Diliman, Cebu Normal University and West Visayas State University.

Free tuition at state universities

RA 10931, the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, covers tuition at state universities and colleges, local universities and colleges, and state-run technical-vocational institutions. Where a nursing programme is offered at an SUC or LUC, tuition is covered for qualified students.

What it does not cover: the non-tuition costs that dominate a nursing budget in later years. Clinical placement charges, uniforms, equipment, textbooks, transport to hospital sites and PRC examination fees remain out of pocket. The Tertiary Education Subsidy exists to help with some of those for qualified students — see our comparison of TES, Tulong Dunong and free tuition.

Entry to SUC nursing programmes is competitive and capped by clinical placement capacity, so treat the free tuition as a reason to apply early rather than a fallback.

Costs that sit outside the schedule of fees

These are real and worth planning for, but the amounts vary by school and by year, and we will not publish invented figures for them. Ask each school which of these it bills through the schedule of fees and which you buy yourself — the split differs, and double-counting is easy.

Clinical requirements. Duty uniforms, in enough sets to rotate through a week of shifts. White duty shoes. Clinical insurance, sometimes bundled into other fees, sometimes not. Transport to clinical sites, which during rotation periods can mean daily travel to a hospital nowhere near campus.

Equipment. A stethoscope, usually required by second or third year. A blood pressure apparatus for practice. A nursing kit — penlight, bandage scissors, a watch with a second hand.

Books and materials. Nursing textbook sets are heavy and are revised often. Ask whether the school runs a book rental or a second-hand exchange before buying new, and ask upperclassmen which titles are genuinely used.

Licensure. After graduation you sit the Nurse Licensure Examination. Application is filed through the PRC online system, and fees are paid directly to PRC. Check the current PRC schedule of fees rather than an older quoted amount, and budget separately if you plan to enrol in a review programme.

Choosing a nursing school

Check the current PRC school performance release, not a remembered ranking. PRC publishes the performance of schools with each Nurse Licensure Examination result. Rankings move, and a school's record three years ago is not evidence about its record now. Our nursing school NLE performance guide tracks this.

Ask where clinical rotations happen. The teaching hospital or affiliate network determines both the quality of your training and the size of the affiliation and RLE charges. Ask for the actual list of affiliated facilities and how rotations are allocated.

Ask for the total clinical hours. CHED sets requirements for the BSN programme, and schools differ in how they schedule them. A programme that compresses hours is cheaper to run and worse to graduate from.

Count location into the cost. A cheaper programme in a city where you must rent is not cheaper. Do the arithmetic on rent, food and transport for four years alongside the fee schedule.

Ask about scholarships specific to health sciences. DOST, CHED and DOLE run scholarship programmes, and hospitals and private foundations sponsor nursing scholars, typically in exchange for a service commitment after graduation. Ask what the commitment period is before you sign.

Plan your nursing education

Nursing remains one of the most portable degrees a Filipino student can earn, but the four-year cost curve is steeper than the brochures suggest. Get the schedule of fees for every year level before you commit.

Compare nursing schools across the Philippines on SchoolFinderPH →

Related reading: BS Nursing programme guide, best nursing schools in the Philippines, nursing versus medical technology, and PRC board exam requirements.