GTEC to continue scrutinising honorary doctorate, 'unearned' prof titles to maintain Ghana's high standards in quality tertiary education

The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) has stated that its directive on the usage of the honorary ‘Doctor’ title is to sanitise the system and give honour and recognition to true academic title holders.

The Director-General of the GTEC, Professor Ahmed Jinapor, explained that historically, Ghana had been known for its high standards in quality tertiary education and delivery where higher education credentials such as doctorate and professorship were obtained.

“So, if we do not put a check on this wanton use of unearned academic titles, then every Ghanaian, through whatever means, will be called a doctor or a professor, and Ghana will become a laughing stock. We cannot allow that to happen,” he stressed.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with the Daily Graphic, Prof. Jinapor said honorary academic titles should not be captured on a curriculum vitae (CV), adding that the worst of all was when such individuals put an honorary doctorate under educational achievements.

“That is total misrepresentation. It is illegal and at worst criminal for you to ascribe to yourself something that you've not earned,” the Director-General of GTEC stressed.

Recently, GTEC has been on the path to purge the system of honorary doctorate and professorship as titles.

It has so far written to some individuals to stop using their honorary academic titles after general warnings and reminders.

Even though some of the affected persons see the exercise as a witch-hunt, people in academia, especially, have welcomed the move to sanitise the space.

Proliferation

Explaining the rationale for the exercise, Prof. Jinapor said GTEC had to step in because there was a proliferation of honorary academic titles in the system, adding that in most instances, such honours were given by institutions that did not have the capacity.

Front view of GTEC

He insisted brandishing honorary academic titles as though they were earned had the potential of diluting the intellectual environment in the country as the situation amounted to “misrepresenting what you are not”.

Prof. Jinapor expressed concerns that such honorary titles had extended to professorship, where some individuals conferred it on themselves and used that to gain appointment as lecturers, while others, in some cases, attained headship of institutions.

“If you will pretend to be a professor and go ahead to profess when, in fact, you do not have the impetus to do that, then think about the product that you are bringing out,” he stated. 

Selective exercise

Dismissing accusations that the GTEC was targeting a certain political group, Prof. Jinapor emphasised that, “for the record, GTEC is not interested in disgracing some individuals.

That is not our aim, neither are we interested in a selective kind of name-shaming or targeting a certain group of people within a certain class or a certain political arena.

“Maybe, by coincidence, some number of people have been named because those people happen to be the majority who are abusing those titles,” he explained.

Throwing more light on the selective targeting of the exercise, Prof. Jinapor explained that as long as those individuals did not sign their names to that effect, “there is nothing wrong if people refer to him as Dr or whatever”.

“But when it becomes official, when you sit on television and say, I am Dr this or that, or when that individual sits on television and they write underneath him, Dr this or that and he does not correct it and he goes with it, there it becomes a problem,” he clarified.

“So, if we find almost everybody and anybody attaining the highest qualification of a PhD, then it becomes worrying,” he added.

Engagement

Prof. Jinapor explained that GTEC had adopted the mechanism of engaging the people concerned by letting them appreciate what the issue was, and to “let them know the ramification of their actions, and if they agree to purge themselves of that, then it ends there”.

“We've not been interested in naming and shaming people.

And there have been so many people who have agreed, informed by our conversation with them, and it ended there. 

“The only challenge has been those who have been, one way or the other, recalcitrant.

So, let me state for the avoidance of doubt that, informed by this exercise, there are people who were using some titles in the public domain, and they've changed that. 

“There were people who were called Professors, put those titles on their websites, and today, when we check, they have reverted to Dr.

There were some who were using Dr, and in actual fact, they were not Drs. They have reverted,” the Director-General of the GTEC explained.

Writer’s email: severious.dery@graphic.com.gh