In addition to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) run by the government that serves as both a source of overseas recruitment agreements and as a marketer of Philippine labour overseas, private nursing schools have acted as migration funnels, expanding enrolment, asserting control over the licensure process, and entering into business agreements with other overseas recruitment agencies.Masselink et al.,"Nurses Inc.", 168 However, retaining qualified instructors and staff has been reported to be as problematic as retaining actual nurses, contributing to low exam pass rates (only 12 of 175 reporting schools had pass rates of 90% or higher in 2005,Barbara L. Brush, "Global Nurse Migration Today", Journal of Nursing Scholarship 40(1) 2008: 22 with an average pass rate of 42% across the country in 2006).Masselink et al.,"Nurses Inc.", 170 Private schools have also begun to control licensure exam review centres, providing extra preparation for international qualification exams at extra cost and with no guarantee of success. It is estimated that between 1999 and 2006, US$700 million was spent on nursing education and licensure review courses by individuals who never took the licensing exams or completed the programming.
