It is time for Liberia to stop treating universities like political campaign gifts and treat them as the nation-building institutions they are meant to be.
Across the country, new universities are being established at a pace that suggests rapid progress. But a closer look reveals something more troubling. Rather than being built on sound academic planning, community consultation, or national development needs, many of these institutions appear to be created for political convenience. Too often they serve the interests of politicians, not the public.
Lawmakers are increasingly sponsoring bills to establish universities in their home districts, sometimes as a shortcut to popularity with voters. While expanding access to higher education is an important goal, access without quality, planning, and sustainability is an empty promise. What results is a growing number of institutions with unclear missions, inadequate infrastructure, and academic programs that do not reflect the labor market or Liberia's development priorities.
To its credit, the National Commission on Higher Education, NCHE, has begun to push back. The Commission has not only issued stronger standards for licensure and accreditation but has also taken bold steps to suspend licenses and shut down institutions that were operating without proper authorization. These recent enforcement actions show that the NCHE is willing to uphold the rules and protect the integrity of Liberia's higher education system.
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Still, challenges remain. One of the biggest weaknesses is that while licensure is mandatory, accreditation remains optional. That means a university can legally operate with a license but never submit itself to the deeper evaluation that accreditation provides. Without that process, students are left to assume quality that may not exist, and employers are left to guess what a graduate's degree really means. This is a significant gap that undermines long-term quality. It is the educational equivalent of giving someone a driver's license just because they know how to blow the horn and turn on the headlights, without ever checking if they can handle the potholes, traffic, or follow the rules on the road.
But there is a more fundamental problem in how universities are being created in the first place. Several new institutions have been established through acts of the Legislature and signed into law by the President, without any prior review by the NCHE. Once a university receives legal recognition in this way, it becomes extremely difficult for the Commission to stop it, even if the institution has no qualified faculty, no curriculum, and no campus to speak of.
This puts the NCHE in a defensive position, trying to regulate after the fact. That is not how a credible system works.
No university should be created by law without first undergoing a full technical review by the NCHE. The Legislature should be required to submit any proposed university to the Commission for vetting. Only after the NCHE confirms that the institution meets national standards in staffing, facilities, governance, and financial sustainability should it move forward for legislative approval.
We must also take a hard look at the programs these new institutions are offering. Too often, programs are selected based not on what the country needs, but on who is available to teach them. Some of the computer and vocational institutions that have sprung up are equally outdated in their focus. A considerable number offer only Microsoft Office training, limiting students to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, while the rest of the world is advancing in areas like cybersecurity, web development, and artificial intelligence. In one case, a program labeled "Secretarial Science" was being promoted as a modern ICT course--despite being rooted in a decades-old concept of clerical work. These programs do not prepare students to compete in today's digital economy, and they certainly do not reflect the skills Liberia needs to move forward. If someone claims to be a tourism expert, a tourism degree is launched. If someone says they studied criminology, a criminology program follows. This backward approach results in graduates with degrees that are misaligned with national priorities and job opportunities.
Universities must be guided by data on employment trends and development goals. Programs in agriculture, education, health sciences, technology, and infrastructure should be prioritized. These are the sectors where Liberia urgently needs trained professionals. The curriculum must serve society, not just the availability of instructors.
Liberia's future depends on a higher education system that is built on quality, not quantity. Institutions must be relevant, regulated, and resourced. The NCHE must be strengthened, its role respected, and its reviews made a legal prerequisite for university creation.
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Otherwise, we risk producing more graduates but fewer professionals, more diplomas but less development. And that is not a legacy we can afford.
About the Author
Dr. Chris Tokpah is the Associate Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness at Delaware County Community College in Pennsylvania. He holds a Ph.D. in Program Evaluation and Measurement, an MBA with an emphasis in Management Information Systems, and a B.Sc. in Mathematics.
Dr. Tokpah also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Research Methods and Statistics in the Ph.D. program at Delaware Valley University. He is an independent consultant who supervised baseline studies and evaluations sponsored by the World Bank, IDA, Geneva Global, USAID, and the African Development Bank.
He is a co-owner of the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Policy (CENREP), a Liberian consulting firm that specializes in strategic planning, monitoring, evaluation, social science research, and training services. His email address is ctokpah@cenrepliberia.org.
