Central Philippine University 6.44

Central Philippine University is a private research university in Iloilo City, Philippines. Established in 1905 through a grant given by the American business magnate, industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller under the auspices of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, it is the first Baptist founded and second American university in the Philippines and Asia. It initially consisted of two separate schools: the Jaro Industrial School for boys and the Baptist Missionary Training School that trains ministers and other Christian workers.In 1913, women began to be admitted to the school for boys, and in 1920 the school started offering high school education. The school for boys became a junior college and started offering college degrees in 1923 and changed its name to Central Philippine College. In 1936 the junior college became a senior college and two years after it in 1938, the Baptist Missionary Training School merged with the theology department of the college. In 1953, the college attained university status.Central pioneered nursing education in the Philippines, when Presbyterian American missionaries established the Union Mission Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1906. In the same year, the CPU Republic, the university's official student governing body, was organized, making it as the first established student governing body in South East Asia. Central was also the first institution to pioneer the work-study programs in the country that were later patterned and followed by other institutions.