Unaccredited university courses: Some people are sleeping on their jobs – Apaak

Ranking Member on Parliament's Education Committee, Clement Abas Apaak, has said the management of some public universities is sleeping on their duties.

This comes on the back of the Auditor General's 2021 report, which found that some public universities were running unaccredited courses.

According to Mr Apaak, this situation is partly due to the failure of the management of these universities to commence processes for the renewal of such accreditations ahead of time.

"Definitely, some people have been sleeping on their jobs. I would not exonerate the university management. They can start the processes at least a year before the accreditations expire. So they ought to make sure that they are also up and doing; they are monitoring the timelines so that they can put in the renewal requests a year ahead of the expirations, and this is allowed," he told Kwame Nkrumah Tikese on Okay FM's Ade Akye Abia morning show.

According to the parliamentarian, the situation is largely due to delays in the renewal of accreditation given to the universities to run the affected courses.

He also blamed the situation on bureaucratic delays on the part of university management in applying for the renewal of accreditations.

"Usually, what happens is that, before the expiration of the accreditation given to a particular course, it is incumbent for the leadership of the university to initiate a renewal of that particular accreditation.

"But many of these [courses] are not new; these are courses that are already being offered. But in a lot of instances, the processes are started late. Some of them would wait to start the processes, sometimes two months before the accreditation in effect ends, and the process takes long.

"When they initiate the process at the National Accreditation Board now under the National Tertiary Commission, they would also need time to do their checks to make sure that indeed the programme is worthy of getting a renewal of its accreditation or if it is a new programme, it satisfies the conditions of accredited," he explained.

He noted that usually, at the time of auditing, the universities have courses that are running but have their accreditation renewals pending, thereby accounting for their classification as unaccredited courses.

"So it is when the audit is performed at a time when the request has gone into consideration for accreditation, and yet the accreditation has not been offered; clearly the Auditor General or the auditors will flag those particular programmes as not having been credited," Mr Apaak who is the Member of Parliament for Builsa South said.

Mr Apaak, however, allayed fears and concerns that universities like the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the University of Ghana are running illegal courses.

"In the meantime, because a lot of these courses are courses that are already being offered, the accreditation can be given retroactively. So students should not panic. It is not going to affect their degrees and the value of their degrees," he added.

Read the full report below:



GA/SEA