MANILA, Philippines—Centro Escolar University is beefing up its capacity as a key provider of tertiary education by building a new campus in Cebu and scouting for a hospital within Metro Manila that would pave the way for the introduction of Medicine in its academic offering.
Top officials of CEU, one of the country’s largest private universities, commemorated, on Tuesday, the company’s 25th year of listing on the Philippine Stock Exchange.
In a press briefing after the ceremonies, CEU president Ma. Cristina Padolina said the university would start building a five-story building in downtown Cebu near the historic Colon district next year. This new facility, which will rise on a 2,000-square meter lot, will pave the way for CEU’s offering of undergraduate programs in Cebu.
But by the coming school-year in June, she said, CEU would already be able to start offering continuing education and graduate school programs in Cebu using leased premises. Once its new campus is completed by 2014, that’s when CEU could accommodate a bigger population and thus start offering undergraduate programs in Cebu, according to Padolina.
The upcoming Cebu complex, which will be developed in phases, will be its fifth campus in the country. CEU currently has campuses in Manila, Malolos (Bulacan) and two in Makati. An initial budget of P50 million has been earmarked for the expansion in Cebu.
At present, CEU has a total student population of 21,000, 14,500 of which are in the main campus in Manila’s university belt, 2,500 in Malolos and around 4,000 in Makati. It has a faculty base of 800. A student typically pays anywhere between P28,000 and P44,000 per semester to enrol in CEU.
“It’s a strong stable population that we have despite the big decline in nursing enrollment. We owe that to the strength of the entire Health Sciences. We also have new areas of growth like Tourism and Hospitality Management which has been growing strong,” Padolina said.
She added that after a decline in demand for IT courses for quite sometime, there was a recent recovery in this area. CEU has been seeing growth in demand for Business and Economics courses, she added.
About 60 percent of CEU’s student population is enrolled in Health Science programs while Hospitality Management accounts for 15 percent.
Moving forward, CEU wants to start offering Medicine but this will require having a hospital. As such, she said the university has been looking for a hospital in the metropolis. She added that CEU would like to own a tertiary hospital with at least 50 beds. “It’s already there in our radar screen so that we can complete our Heath Science program,” she said.
In the future, she said CEU would consider expanding to Mindanao as well.
CEU has vowed to continue faculty development and work towards its goal of making a name as a research hub in Health Sciences, where it has a strong market position, as well as in Education and Business Management.