University of the Cordilleras is named after the sole land-locked region of the Phllippines on Luzon Island. It started in 1946 as Baguio College, with 156 trainee teachers.
It added civil engineering in 1949 and the first law school north of Manila in 1952 and it became Baguio College Foundation in 1966. Full university standing was achieved in 2003. Currently it has two campuses on either side of Burnham Park, Baguio’s main city centre park.
Students are spread across schools of criminal justice, teacher education, engineering and architecture, nursing, information technology and computer science, accounting, tourism and hospitality management, law and business administration. Three schools – criminal justice, information technology and teacher education – have Centre of Excellence status.
The School of Criminal Justice has had the highest pass rate nationally 45 times, most recently in June 2022 and August 2023. In 2013 a pass rate of 100 per cent included individual students with five of the top six marks, and nine of the top 13. This was followed by a run of five consecutive top pass rates between 2015 and 2017.
Accountancy students produced the best individual results in 2023 and 2024, while the school of law was rated among the 10 most productive nationally between 2011 and 2020.
It has recently collaborated with other Baguio universities to produce systems for landslip warning and draining runoff water into acquifers, while in 2024 computer engineering students devised "Smart Bins" for garbage which were trialled in the city centre.
