Dean of School of Performing Arts And African Studies, Professor Kofi Agyekum ( Opanyin Agyekum ) has blamed the current discrepancy in the accreditation of some universities in the country for lack of qualified personnel to handle a piled up programs at the Accreditation Board waiting for approval.
Speaking to this reporter on telephone, he explained that the blame is a shared one by the affected universities and the Board. Opanyin Agyekum indicated that if one goes to the Board now the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission, one is likely to see a pile of programs waiting to be approved but left unattended to for years.
The professor said it can sometimes take more than three years for a program to be approved because experts from the various universities to go through the rigorous process of auditing and approving the courses are just not there . This involes scrutinising course content, environment, infrastructures, libraries, teaching staff, and many other things that is time consuming.
He contended that most professors because of their workload in terms of lecturing,research, supervision, administrative work and many other things cannot be easily poached to do the accreditation work on time. Besides GTEC itself does not have a standing team who can do the job on time. Worse still, the reward for that tedious work is woefully unenthusiastic.
He said inspite of the current situation no past students would be affected because it wasn't the fault of them to go through such academic hitch. Again affiliated universities would also not suffer any setback or withdrawal of programs already offered.
Asked whether foreign professors cannot be brought in to solve the problem he said they can but they also face the same challenges like the Ghanaian counterparts. What's even worrisome is the fact that the lecturers of the universities seeking that service cannot and must not accredit their own courses at their own universities but different lecturers from other universities.
He further stated that the affected universities must take pains to rectify the anomaly to set the path for smooth academic calendar. He argued that if the universities were to wait , they couldn't have introduced new programs , but in the current fast moving world ,the universities cannot continue to be static and lean on old programs without new ones.
What needs to be done he suggested must be the quick resolve of the discrepancies ; staffing the GTEC to do that work , incentivise the processors who do this tedious work very well , offering interim accreditation whiles the applications are being considered, among many measures.
Opanyin Agyekum told this reporter that he had on countless occasions prompted the Accreditation Board to quicken the space of their service because time and tide wait for no man.
He disclosed that he had been doing some work for them but he is so taken up with other academic work and thus he is restrained to avail call his time to do that job even though he would have loved to to help them.
Story by: Nana Poku
Комментарии