The Director-General of the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), Professor Ahmed Jinapor, has said the decision to crack down on the abuse of academic titles in the country is to safeguard the sanctity of professorship and maintain public trust in the institutions.
He said the inappropriate use of titles, especially honorary doctorates, “strikes at the heart of academic integrity.”
“This intervention is about protecting the value and prestige of the qualifications you have worked so hard to earn,” Prof. Jinapor told members of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) at their 22nd Biennial Congress at Aburi in the Eastern Region.
He said no matter how excellent individual universities were, they could not achieve significant national impact on their own.
“We must operate as a unified, collaborative national system. This is the core philosophy behind establishing GTEC under the Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023).
“Our regulatory role is not to stifle innovation or micromanage, but to strengthen the entire sector; not to control, but to coordinate for quality, relevance and integrity,” he said.
Prof. Jinapor said the commission’s recent actions were all deliberate steps towards building a coherent and trustworthy system.
On the Payroll Audit & Streamlining of Office Holding Allowances, he said that it was not a mere accounting exercise and that it was an essential intervention to ensure fairness, accountability and the efficient use of public resources.
The participants
By eliminating duplications and ensuring transparency in remuneration, he said, “we are building a sustainable financial foundation for our public universities, freeing up resources that can be redirected to support teaching, research and vital infrastructure.”
On the issue of training programme assessors, Prof. Jinapor said, “We need your expertise to shape the quality assurance process from within. I urge every qualified academic (Senior Lecturer rank and above) to avail themselves of this opportunity.
“This is your chance to directly define and uphold what excellence means in the age of artificial Intelligence (AI), ensuring that academic standards are both rigorous and relevant to our national development aspirations,” he further told the UTAG members.
Prof. Jinapor said the recent directive to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast (UCC) to hand over after attaining the compulsory retirement age was a clear demonstration of GTEC’s commitment to the rule of law and institutional governance.
“Upholding these statutes is not punitive; it is fundamental to preserving fairness, stability and the long-term health of our institutions.
“These measures are the necessary groundwork - the solid, transparent and credible foundation upon which we can build our pedagogical future,” he said.
Prof. Jinapor said ethics in the age of AI was non-negotiable and that “as we integrate AI into our pedagogy, we must instil in our students a deep understanding of its ethical implications.
“We must produce graduates who not only can code and develop algorithms, but who also comprehend the profound moral weight of their creations - who can question data privacy, mitigate algorithmic bias and ensure that technology serves humanity, not the other way around,” he said.
