According to This Study, UP Students Are Very Single
Don’t shoot the messenger, but we have some news for you: It looks like majority of UP students are single.
After surveying 1,200 UP students across UP’s seven campuses as part of a two-year mental health study called “Diwa Mental Health Survey,” UP professor Dr. Ronald Del Castillo found that 67 percent of Iksolar ng Bayan are in fact single.
The UP campus with the most “single” students was UP Diliman. Considering that Quezon City has the largest population of single people in Metro Manila, this is hardly a surprise. UP Visayas and UP Manila followed in second and third place. Meanwhile, UP Cebu had the least amount of single students.
The study also found that the top five fields with the most “self-reported” single students were natural sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, and geology); medical and health and allied sciences; social and behavioral sciences; business administration and related fields; and engineering and technology.
Based on the survey, Castillo also found that the most common reported cumulative general weighted average of self-reported single students was between 1.76 and 2.49.
Meanwhile, 28 percent of UP students were “self-reported” to be seriously dating or in a committed relationship (excluding married or partnered persons). Of the population of non-singles in UP, 16 percent identified themselves as bisexual; six percent identified themselves as genderqueer, gender non-confirming, or non-binary; and 23 percent identified themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual.
Now, the study didn’t report the reasons behind “self-reported” singledom of the single respondents. Maybe the students are too bogged down with school work to prioritize their love lives, maybe they just preferred to be single, or maybe they just can’t catch a break.
Castillo is still working on a journal article that will better explain the data, but we just want to know one more thing: What about the alumni?
