Students in Bislig City who want a state university degree without leaving town have one option: the Bislig campus of North Eastern Mindanao State University. What most people here do not realise is that the institution behind it has carried five different names, and that the Bislig campus itself used to belong to a completely different university based in Davao City.
Five names in four decades
The institution began in 1982, not as a university but as an external studies center of Bukidnon State University. It took an act of Congress to make it independent. Republic Act 7377, signed on April 10, 1992, converted it into Surigao del Sur Polytechnic College.
In 2000 it absorbed the institute in Cantilan and was renamed Surigao del Sur Polytechnic State College. Ten years later, Republic Act 9998 elevated it to Surigao del Sur State University, the name many Bisliganon still use out of habit. The current name arrived with Republic Act 11584, signed on July 30, 2021, which renamed it North Eastern Mindanao State University.
So the shorthand changed from BSU external studies center, to SSPC, to SDSPSC, to SDSSU, to NEMSU. Anyone who graduated from the Bislig campus before 2021 holds a diploma with a different institution's name on it than a graduate today.
The campus did not start out as theirs
The Bislig campus has its own separate history. For years it was not part of the Surigao del Sur system at all. It was a campus of the University of Southeastern Philippines, the state university headquartered in Davao City.
The handover happened in stages. In 2019 the USeP Bislig campus was formally turned over to what was then Surigao del Sur State University, making Bislig its seventh campus and the farthest one from the main campus in Tandag City. The paperwork took considerably longer than the handshake. USeP did not formally donate the properties and equipment of the former Bislig campus until June 13, 2024, at a turnover ceremony held at the Bislig campus itself, with USeP president Bonifacio G. Gabales Jr. and NEMSU president Nemesio G. Loayon representing the two universities.
That is a five year gap between the campus changing hands in practice and the assets changing hands on paper.
Where Bislig sits in the system
NEMSU now runs seven campuses across Surigao del Sur: the main campus in Tandag City, plus Bislig, Tagbina, Lianga, Cagwait, San Miguel and Cantilan. Bislig is the southernmost of them, which is a plain consequence of geography. Bislig City sits at the far southern end of the province, roughly 152 kilometers from Tandag.
Why it matters locally
Bislig spent decades as a company town. PICOP Resources was established in 1963, hit its peak in 1984, and ceased operations in October 2001 before shutting down completely in 2008. When the mill went, the single largest reason for young Bisliganon to stay and work went with it. The city's population tells the story plainly: 103,510 in 1990, down to 94,535 by 2015.
A state university campus in the city is the difference between a Bisliganon student paying Tandag or Davao rent and living at home. For a city still working out what it does after PICOP, that is not a small thing.
Students looking for current program offerings and admission requirements should check with the campus directly, since program lists change between academic years.