Check authenticity of institution-NAB urges prospective online students

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02-03-09


THE National Accreditation Board (NAB) has urged persons who wish to pursue online and distance-learning courses to cross-check with the board to ascertain the authenticity or otherwise of the institutions offering such courses before they apply to undertake the courses.
In addition, it has called on employers to cross-check the authenticity of the certificates of those who claim to have taken online and distance courses from the board.
The Executive Secretary of the NAB, Mr Kwame Dattey, told the Daily Graphic that persons offering online and distance-learning programmes had the tendency to hire the services of other people to do their thesis and other academic work for them.
He said NAB checked the syllabi that such institutions were offering against what was being offered in the country, and also had to check whether they were following the country’s admissions requirements.
Moreover, he said, some of the institutions offering online and distance-learning programmes did not qualify to operate in their countries of origin and so offered programmes to unsuspecting students outside their own countries.
He gave the names of some of the recognised institutions that were offering online and distance-learning programmes as Accra Institute of Technology, University of Applied Management, Quality Distance Learning Centre and Sikkim Manipal University.
He charged the authorities of private tertiary institutions to cross-check the authenticity of certificates presented by applicants for admission from bodies such as the West African Examinations Council (WAEC).
The move, he said, was to ensure that applicants did not use fake certificates to gain admission into their institutions, saying that the “the public institutions are strict on these things and even go to the extent of publishing the names and photographs of those who use fake documents to enter their institutions”.
Mr Dattey also asked students to check the accreditation of institutions, especially the private ones, before applying to them, and stated that currently 34 private tertiary institutions affiliated to some public and foreign universities had been accredited by the board. Twenty others, he said, were on the waiting list to be accredited.
He said accreditation was not a one off thing and that before the expiry date of an accreditation, an institution would have to re-apply. The minimum period of accreditation, he said, was three years while the maximum was five years.
He said some institutions had been accredited to run Business, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and theology programmes.
Mr Dattey expressed concern about the way some private tertiary institutions admitted students, and said that such institutions admitted students who had more than the nationally accepted aggregate of 24, and organised remedial programmes for the unqualified applicants and admitted them.
“We are auditing the institutions and this is what we are identifying. When we identify particular students, we send their names to the universities the private institution is affiliated to, and ask the universities not to graduate those unqualified students,” he explained.
He called on the public to give them information if they suspected that something untoward was happening, saying that they, were paying the money and so they should not keep quiet.
Mr Dattey mentioned some of the major problems the board faced as far as the private institutions were concerned as the use of unqualified teachers and admission of unqualified students.
Mr Dattey also said the public tertiary institutions had the problem of overcrowding but that “it appears they are taking steps to solve them with the support of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund)”.
At the end of 2008, he said, the public universities were seven; University of Ghana (UoG), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), University of Cape Coast (UCC), University of Education, Winneba (UEW), Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), University of Development Studies (UDS) and the University of Mines and Technology (UMaT).
He said five (out of 10) polytechnics; Ho, Accra, Cape Coast, Sunyani and Takoradi had been given accreditation to run B-Tech degrees in some programmes.
Mr Datttey gave the names of the other public tertiary institutions offering degree courses alongside their original programmes as the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ), National Film and Television Institution (NAFTI) and the Regional Maritime University (RMU).