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The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) approved about 1,000 university academic programmes in the third quarter of 2023, in line with efforts to ensure the institutions run only accredited programmes.
It has also set February 1, 2024, to lift the ban on the accreditation of some academic programmes that were withheld last year due to established discrepancies in getting those programmes certified.
The Director-General (D-G) of GTEC, Prof. Ahmed Abdulai Jinapor, announced this at a meeting with heads of technical universities in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region last Monday.
He said the commission was able to clear many of the backlog of accreditation applications through the introduction of a digital platform known as the Accelerated Accreditation Approach which sought to speed up accreditation processes for programmes of universities.
The D-G said that the platform was to ensure that GTEC cleared the backlog of accreditation issues so that all programmes would be in good standing within the shortest possible time.
Prof. Jinapor entreated heads of tertiary institutions to stick to their core mandate in conformity with laid down procedures in rolling out programmes.
“Beginning February 2024, we are going to accept new programmes from institutions.
But as we had already indicated in our previous letter, you need to demonstrate that you have a clean sheet,” he said.
The D-G said the accreditation culture must be tuned to compliance devoid of non-adherence and praised the current leadership of tertiary institutions for their positive attitude towards rectifying problems they inherited.
Prof. Jinapor further said that GTEC had begun a serial publication of unaccredited programmes and centres in newspapers and on the commission’s website.
He, therefore, cautioned the public against accepting offers from institutions to study unaccredited programmes.
The D-G said that his outfit would also submit a list of unaccredited programmes and centres to government agencies for them not to employ people with certificates of unaccredited courses.
He advised the public to always visit the commission’s website where accredited courses would be published to guide them in their choices.
Prof. Jinapor said the measures formed part of efforts by the regulatory body to sanitise the accreditation environment in universities in the country.
The GTEC, in October 2023, suspended the processing of new accreditation applications for academic programmes from all public universities, including technical universities, until January 1, 2024.
The suspension, however, did not affect the University of Environment and Sustainable Development (UESD) at Somanya, in the Eastern Region.
That decision was informed by the need to sanitise the accreditation space as a result of the persistent non-compliance by some institutions in the country.
