The 2021 Auditor-General’s (AG) report has revealed that a total of 673 academic programs offered by two major tertiary institutions in the country, the University of Ghana (UG) and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) are not accredited.
Three hundred and seventy-four (374) out of the total number are the courses that the UG is said to be running without accreditation, whilst KNUST had 299 unaccredited programmes.
The Chronicle is appalled at this news, considering the global respect and reverence that these two institutions have. Until other tertiary institutions were established, these two tertiary institutions, including the University of Cape Coast, held high the flag of Ghana in the field of academia.
We, therefore, expected them to have done better than this. We, therefore, applaud the Auditor-General for its painstaking effort to lift the lid on this scourge and also provide recommendations as panacea to the problem.
The AG has recommended that management of the UG should expedite action for accreditation and re-accreditation of all new and expired academic programmes.
In the case of KNUST, the AG said management of the university should cease running programmes that are not accredited or having its accredited certificates expired, until they are accredited or renewed, to avoid sanctions by the National Accreditation Board.
This is where we disagree with the AG. Some students, through no fault of theirs, have paid huge sums of money to study some of these programs identified as unaccredited. Should the university cease running these programs, what then would become of these students?
We understand that the AG by these recommendations is trying to rectify a bad situation and helping to make the structures work. We, however, hold the view that in trying to put things right the innocent students should not be made to suffer any collateral damage.
We recommend that the school be allowed to run the program, while steps are taken to get accreditation for all the programs.
The schools should also be fined for their acts of negligence so that they do not repeat the same offences, going forward.
But as the schools takes steps to remedy the situation, one institution we would want the AG to pay attention to is the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC).
GTEC is a merger of the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) and the National Accreditation Board under the new Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023).
This body is mandated to accredit public and private tertiary education institutions, as well as the programmes run by these institutions. They are also to “publish, as the Commission considers appropriate, the list of accredited public and private tertiary education institutions and programmes at the beginning of each academic year.”
The Chronicle is of the view that if the Commission has been carrying out its functions well, it would have noticed that these two schools have not sought accreditation for the programs the AG uncovered, and would have called their attention to it.
Not that the universities are not aware of their responsibilities to ensure that they renew expired programs, but staff of GTEC are paid by the tax payer to ensure that tertiary institutions get regular accreditations for their programs.
We believe that someone at GTEC is sleeping on the job and must be asked to sit up and work.
