Students undertaking unaccredited programmes at KNUST, UG
will not be affected – Prof. Salifu
The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) has assured students
of the University of Ghana (UG) and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and
Technology (KNUST) that their interests will be protected in the ongoing saga
of unaccredited programmes.
The assurance follows the release of the 2021
Auditor-General's Report, which indicated that over 600 programmes run by the
two leading universities were without accreditation.
According to the report, of the 360 programmes
run by the KNUST, only 61 were accredited, while 374 of the programmes offered
in the UG were unaccredited. This has triggered concerns about the validity
of the certificates issued by the two universities to those who participate in
such programmes.
However, the Director-General of the GTEC,
Professor Mohammed Salifu, has allayed such fears, saying: “We want to reassure
the students that their interests will be at the centre of the resolution of
the problem and shall be protected.”
“We are fully aware that the students are the
likely innocent and unfortunate victims and so the commission will make sure
that their interests are protected,” Prof Salifu told Daily Graphic's
Severious Kale-Dery.
Legacy issues
Prof. Salifu said the issues were “legacy
issues” that predated the establishment of GTEC, and added that the commission
had been working with the universities for a speedy resolution, even before the
release of the Auditor-General's Report.
“As a result, many of the programmes flagged as
being without active accreditation in the report have either now been fully
reaccredited or are at advanced stages of consideration by GTEC.”
“Indeed, some are due to be approved by the
next board meeting on September 15, 2022,” he added.
Accreditation regime
Prof. Salifu explained that every programme
offered by a university at first accreditation was for a period of three years
and subsequently for a five-year duration for re-accreditation.
Therefore, all programmes had to go through
reaccreditation every five years, he pointed out.
He explained that the rationale for re-accreditation
was to ensure that the programmes remained fit for purpose and were being
delivered to the required standards and quality.
He added that every accreditation approval
letter explicitly stated that the “institution must start the process for re-accreditation
one year before the expiry of the current accreditation”.
“So the onus is on the university to trigger
the process by completing the appropriate self-assessment questionnaire freely
available on the GTEC website,” he added.
The Director-General expressed
regret that in spite of the above provisions, many of the programmes referred
to by the Auditor-General's Report had their accreditation by the erstwhile
National Accreditation Board lapsing as far back as 2013, without any action
being taken by the universities in accordance with the conditions of
accreditation and the law.
Accusation untenable
Prof. Salifu said claims that the problem was
due to the slow nature of the assessment process or bureaucracy at GTEC were a
misleading distraction intended to shift blame.
In his view, “if both universities had simply
followed the rules and the law, the problem we are addressing today would not
have arisen”.
“The GTEC takes responsibility for its
processes and strives to improve upon them all the times, even though one or
two isolated glitches may occur occasionally, as it is with every human
institution.
“But, certainly, running a programme without
accreditation, whether expired or never acquired, since 2013 cannot reasonably
be blamed on bureaucracy or inaction by an institution that is barely two years
old,” he said.
Sanctions
He reminded managers of all universities about
the severe sanctions regime prescribed under the new Education Regulatory
Bodies Act 2020 (Act 1023), which included steep fines or imprisonment or both
for “advertising; causing to be advertised and/or running an institution or
programme without a valid accreditation”.
“For now, our priority is working proactively
with the universities to rectify the current situation, but the universities
need to be on notice, as they were informed during engagements with GTEC, long
before the release of the Auditor-General's report, that some sanctions would
have to follow after the resolution.
“It is important that measures taken as part of
the process for resolving this situation are deterrent enough to avoid any
future recurrence,” he said.
He hinted that at a meeting held last Friday,
at the instance of the Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, between
council chairpersons and vice-chancellors of the University of Cape Coast
(UCC), KNUST and UG, on the one hand, and the GTEC, on the other, both parties
resolved to expedite action on the prior agreed plan for a speedy resolution.
Prof. Salifu advised potential students and
parents to always visit the GTEC website to check on the accreditation status
of all programmes before enrolling onto them.
They should also form the habit of looking out
for the list of GTEC accredited institutions published in the media from time
to time to guide their choices, he added.