Universities’ inaction must not affect students

The fate of hundreds of students who enrolled into 160 study centres of three public universities across the country hangs in the balance under bizarre circumstances.

Last week, the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) released a list of study centres barred from being used as study centres or satellite campuses of the University of Cape Coast, the University of Education Winneba, and the University for Development Studies (UDS).

The GTEC explained that the centres were not accredited and were not fit for purpose. It further warned prospective students to stay away from those centres, threatening that applicants who pursued programmes at those centres would do so at their own risk because GTEC would not recognise academic credentials awarded to students who enrolled and studied at those unaccredited centres of the UCC, UDS or UEW for the 2024/2025 academic year.

The Daily Graphic is heartened by the fact that a memorandum of understanding (MoU) reached by the GTEC with six universities indicated that students who had already been enrolled should be taught but those centres should not enrol new students for the 2024/2025 academic year.

While we agree with the GTEC’s warning to parents, guardians and prospective students to avoid enrolling in programmes offered at those unaccredited study centres, we believe that GTEC must crack the whip on any university that continues to violate its directive.

The desire of these universities to maximise profit at the expense of mature students should not be allowed to continue.

Admittedly, the GTEC has outlined its punitive actions, going forward, for universities still enrolling students at unaccredited centres, which include the revocation of the accreditation licence, refusal to grant accreditation for new licence, and the refusal of accreditation of satellite campuses.

However, we are wondering what happens if a university decides to continue to use those centres in defiance at the directives. We believe that the GTEC should not even give the universities that latitude to decide whether to stop running those centres or not.

The fact is that considering where some of the centres are located, some of these students will not have the opportunity to verify with GTEC and might not even be aware that they are supposed to verify their status.

Truth be told, some of the students are not even aware that the centres are supposed to stop operating, and so, the responsibility rests on GTEC to enforce cessation of the operation of those centres, otherwise ignorant students will continue to patronise those centres. 

Such students have become victims of circumstances and the GTEC should not allow these universities to exploit the ignorance of the students to continue their act, which amounts to fraud.

The good thing is that GTEC says it is not against satellite campuses, so why do these universities continue to use these unapproved centres?

The concern of GTEC is that the centres are not fit for purpose because per the educational architecture, the infrastructure at the various levels of education vary. And so, using senior high schools for lecture rooms does not meet the minimum standard, to say the least.

Classrooms are for teaching, and lecture rooms are for lecturing during which the lecturer engages the students in discussion. It means that a typical pre-tertiary classroom cannot be equated to a lecture theatre.

The sad thing is that these universities are aware that in securing an accreditation certificate for a programme or an institution, such certificates are non-transferable, and, therefore, the act is illegal.

They have no excuse to run programmes that are accredited to them at the respective mother campuses to other centres, and we believe that GTEC should institute stiffer punitive measures to discourage this intellectual dishonesty and exploitation of the ignorance of unsuspecting students.

It has also come to light that these universities are riding on the back of mature students to recruit candidates who do not have the basic requirement of a work experience in the field of study and minimum entry requirement as mature students.

So GTEC has to run an audit of the students, and those who do not have anything near the minimum qualification should be withdrawn.

This is sad, and we urge the GTEC to compel the universities to refund all the money such students must have paid plus interest to serve as a deterrent to them and other universities which might be nursing such intentions in the name of internally generated fund.

After all, what good is it for a student to struggle through four years of academic work only to realise that the certificate he or she is carrying is not recognised?

The Daily Graphic learnt that some students who secured their certificates from such centres were denied the opportunity to further their education outside Ghana because their institutions of choice did quick checks with GTEC only to realise that their certificates were invalid because the programmes were not accredited.

We expect GTEC to crack the whip and play its supervisory role without fear or favour. After all, no institution is above the law.