⌛ Silliman University

Good day all. My filipina wife would like to return to nursing college and is considering Silliman in Dumagute City. I have been on other forums and haven't been able to get much information. According to literature Silliman is a highly respectable University in the Philippines as well as the USA and I would expect to read this information from the school. I would like to hear first hand from people with knowledge or experience. Also any information on Dumagute in general for someone relocating from the US. Any info appreciated. Thanks

Dan

 

Surprised!

I am very surprised you have asked this question? Welcome medic! The very fact that you have Heard of the University has answered the Question! It has one of the best Web Sites available to Students, Any of the Students that have graduated are not, I feel on this site as we are in the Norm, Poor Foreigners of little learning compared to the likes of Silliman standard.

Nursing is a Vocation handled by 2 or 3 of the Colleges /Universities here as I am sure your wife will know. We hear a lot of talk about PI achievements not being accepted by the US or in deed Europe. Why Return to PI for a degree in Nursing, that may well be not accepted in the rest of the World. I do presume that you are not in the PI now?

Please do not read this as a Downer but in general, Why? has she decided to do this?


Jack P.

 

Here's SU's website: Silliman University, Dumaguete City, Oriental Negros, Philippines. You can find everything there...

 

Silliman University

To echir, thank you for the website.

To jackpeterson, a couple of my wife's friends have graduated from nursing school in Manila, then came to the states and passed the NCLEX-RN without problem. School in the PI would be cheaper, hopefully getting assigned clinicals is less political and it's still a quality education. Her family lives in CDO and neither of us has a desire to live in Manila or CDO. A friend suggested Dumaguete and that led us to Silliman. We will make permanent residence in that area after retirement: however that is in the future.

 

Tough Call!

medic, This to me is a Tough call, I Admire you and your wife for the Forethought you have. It is without Doubt going to be a success on the Nursing front, Anyone who will tackle the stricter and I guess more costly exams in the Wider World, stands a Better chance of Graduating at a pass, if they go with a good formal Education in Nursing Already. This obviously is the case, as you quote a friend that has already achieved it. Can I ask if you will stay her in Dgte when she graduates or will you return to wherever you are now, You don't Actually say? Whatever, I would always wish you well on your Quest!


Jack P.

 

RE: Tough Call

Our goal is to purchase a residence, retire, hopefully in the Dgte area in the future after she receives her nursing degree and works for a few years back in the States. We are both energetic and fairly young, not quite ready for retirement yet. If I thought there was a possibility of gainful employment in the PI our mind set may change: however, what use is moving to paradise if you don't have the ability to truly enjoy it.

 

Fantastic Sentiment!

Medic, this is so true, we hear so many stories about People Thinking that paradise is Free. It is Refreshing to read posts from realists who have thought long and hard about the future. Unless you have the Means to support yourself, it can so easily end up Doom & Gloom. I do hope you wish comes true, Mine and many others did and I see no reason why yours should not either, You have obviously given all the Pros & Cons the 3rd degree. Best of luck to you Both.


Jack P.

 

Overall, I would not say that Silliman is the best University in the country , but their Nursing degree is one of the top. There are a few that are a notch higher than Silliman, like the University of the Philippines and Ateneo de Manila. They are in the city though and that is the downside.

Degrees from most schools in the Philippines are acceptable for licensure exams in the US in any field.

Europe follows a different program and accepts only degrees from their former colonies who of course, have similar programs.

Silliman offers a Bachelors degree in Nursing, a four year course. There is a program in the US that is an LVN, or a Licensed VocationalNurse which is 2 year course . This has allows limited scope of responsibility compared to a BSN.

There is so much more a BSN can do . They become surgical nurses, team members in transplant operations,Nurse practitioners, case workers or administrators. All of these and more the Filipino nurses are doing every day in the US. They are just as good as those who graduated in the US universities. Some believe that if the Filipino nurses went on strike they can cripple a hospital.


It is not a bad idea to work in the US during your more productive years. It is true that for one to retire well, one must have some financial security. On my par,t my husband and I worked in our professions in the US, my husband as P.E. in Mechanical engineering and me as a Licensed Pharmacist. We had a late start, but in a span of 20 years we were able to give our three kids a good college education sans student loans,and came home to retire with a comfortable pension.

What I want to stress though, is that we are not the exception, we are the just like other Filipino professional retirees. A lot are doing better than us because they had an earlier start.It is very rare to find those who did not make it. I would say, go for it , Medic, it is not a bad idea.


Felisa

P.S.

Hi Jack . We just got back from the US. I have not forgotten my invitation for you to visit our farm in Tanjay. We are still catching up on a lot of things but in a month or so ,if you and Corazon and Trisha are free we can get together.

 

Again it depends on which area you are talking. FYI, Silliman has the top research journal in the country, followed only by the University of the Philippines in their Los Banos campus. It also has the best research program among universities in the Philippines, where the UP Diliman campus is only second. Ateneo seems to discourage research, which for me is quite disgusting. In an interview at the ANC, the Dean of their college of business said that "Ateneo graduates are world class" only in theory because they could compete with Singapore schools in exams (meaning with canned knowledge, the one taught by the instructors). How could we attain world class status if we do not have research, getting only canned knowledge all the time, having no initiatives to discover things on our own, and to reason out?

These campuses (UP and Ateneo) are currently in a favorable situation because they are in the metro, and with the imperial thinking that has been propagated among Filipinos for a long time wherein we were thinking that all the best are in the metro, all the best people and opportunities are concentrated in that area, including the best educational institutions.

Recent trends and events prove that the metro is not the best place there is in the country. Business there is risky with the bad elements, flooding and the overall unlivability of the metro because of not so good governance.

And mind you, Metro Manila is not the best for educational institutions, according to this article. It states:

“just being in an urban environment … impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street,” he writes of the latest research, “the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control.”

In addition to the noise and the bustle, the city fails to deliver one of the brain’s most beneficial elements, the force of nature upon cognitive development. We have traded quiet, wide-open spaces for crowded concrete jungles. Instead of mother nature and its ability to soothe, we are “surrounded by taxis, traffic, and millions of strangers.”
​

Read the whole article. It would be eye opening.

 

Thanks, good to know that. You would not get that impression from media. The sources they always qoute are from UP and Ateneo. My friends from the academe of UP may be surprised to hear this, but they hold Silliman in very high regard.


BTW, in what fields does Silliman surpass UP ? I would really like to know. I did not study in Silliman, but my brothers and most of my cousins did.