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Ghana: Unaccredited Tertiary Courses, a Cause for Concern
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Public Agenda (Accra)
EDITORIAL
9 May 2008
Posted to the web 9 May 2008
On Wednesday, the National Board for Professional and Technician Examinations (NABPTEX) organized a workshop in Accra to introduce its operations to non-university private tertiary institutions.
The workshop brought to light a rather disturbing revelation that 53.5% of private tertiary institutions, which advertised in newspapers during the first quarter of this year, were not accredited to run those course. Of the 71 private institutions which advertised in newspapers between January and March 2008, 38 were found to have no accreditation.
This information was contained in the National Accreditation Board (NAB)'s Quarterly Report on Institutional Monitoring. The reported also said as many as 470 (71%) out of 567 programmes advertised by these institutions had no accreditation, meaning only 97 out of the 567 programmes had been accredited. See story on front page.
Indeed, these revelations are worrying and should agitate the minds of all stakeholders in education, especially the government, which has human resource development as one of the pillars of its development agenda.
What is more distressing is that no one - except NAB, which conducted the survey and perhaps, the culprits - knows the identity of these institutions. This is because the report named neither the specific institutions nor the programmes.
Our laws require that the accreditation process for a new tertiary institution starts with institutional accreditation or authorization which is given only when NAB is satisfied with the infrastructure, library, laboratories/workshops, equipment, etc. This is only the first step and is not sufficient.
Once authorization is given the institution can go ahead to recruit staff (at least the head of department and one staff member) to develop the curricula and set up the department and its laboratories/workshops.
The important thing to note is that even after developing the curricula the institution in question cannot advertise for students until the second phase of accreditation, which is the process of programme accreditation, was done with.
During the programme accreditation, the institution has to provide evidence that it has affiliation with an existing institution or body.
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It is, therefore, unacceptable that some institutions - in fact, the majority - have managed to outwit the process and yet we cannot make their identities available to the public. Many of such institutions are those purporting to be journalism training schools. Indeed over the past few months there have been countless advertisements in the dailies by these fake tertiary institutions for students, claiming to be affiliated to renowned universities and professional institutions outside Ghana.
Public Agenda has no doubt that the institutions in question will continue to take advantage of young people who are desperate to further their education in the face of their failure to secure admission to any of the traditional universities or tertiary institutions. When such institutions and programmes are patronized what will be the fate of these students? From what is happening, it is clear that hundreds of students may have fallen victims to such institutions.
The buck definitely stops with the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports, and NAB. Some officials at the ministry and NAB are certainly not performing their supervisory work properly. In a country where officials are desperate to make money through any means, if it means killing people; this newspaper will not be surprised to hear that some officials at the NAB have taken money and have issued fake accreditation to this institutions. It is our view that NAB should immediately publish or advertise the names of these unaccredited institutions, as well as, the unaccredited programmes for the benefit of the public. Anything short of that is tantamount to throwing dust in the eyes of the public.
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