The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) has introduced a digital platform to speed up accreditation processes for universities and programmes.
Known as the Accelerated Accreditation Approach, the platform seeks to halve the waiting period for accreditation.
The Director-General of GTEC, Professor Ahmed Jinapor, made this known to the Daily Graphic after a courtesy call on Vice-Chancellors Ghana (VCG) during their 76th meeting held at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) last Wednesday.
The courtesy call, which was his maiden encounter with the VCs, was to listen to them, dialogue and seek their collaboration towards improved operations among them.
Issues discussed between GTEC and the VCG centred on updates on accreditations, issues of office holdings and satellite campuses of the various universities.
Digital platform
Prof. Jinapor explained that the decision to introduce the platform was to ensure that the GTEC cleared any backlog of accreditation issues so that all programmes were in good standing within the shortest possible time.
He appealed to the VCs to take a personal interest in ensuring that their Quality Assurance staff sped up their processes to avoid delays which often led to a lot of challenges for all stakeholders.
The DG said the accreditation culture must be tuned to compliance devoid of non-adherence as existed before and praised the current leadership of VCG for their attitude towards rectifying the problems as inherited and promised to work on them in that regard.
Suspension
The GTEC, in October suspended the processing of new accreditation applications for academic programmes from all public universities, including the technical universities, until January 1, 2024.
The suspension, however, did not affect the University of Environment and Sustainable Development (UESD) at Somanya in the Eastern Region.
That decision, the GTEC said, was informed by the need to sanitise the accreditation space as a result of the persistent non-compliance by some institutions with the accreditation requirements of the country.
Critical role of VCG
Addressing the meeting earlier, Prof. Ahmed Jinapor eulogised the VCG for the critical roles they have played in ensuring development and improvement at the tertiary level of education in the country.
He assured them of GTEC’s preparedness to collaborate with the VCG and all other stakeholders in the nation’s education space to help transform the nation through education.
Speaking on the satellite campuses, Prof. Jinapor appealed to the VCG not to use church premises, senior high schools and other such infrastructure as satellite campuses of their universities.
Prof. Jinapor commended members of the VCG for the crucial roles they played in ensuring development and improvement at the tertiary level of education in the country.
He assured them of GTEC’s preparedness to collaborate with the VCG and all other stakeholders in the education sector to help transform the nation through education.
Continuous engagement
The President of the VCG, Prof. Rita Akosua Dickson, on behalf of the VCs, pledged to continue engaging GTEC on their operations.
On behalf of the VCG, she affirmed their readiness to continue deepening the existing relationship with GTEC towards education development in the country.
Prof. Dickson said there was the need for more engagement between the two institutions on their operations to help speed up as well as get the best training and outcomes for the nation.
She commended the leadership of GTEC for the innovations introduced to help speed up the accreditation processes at the various universities.