The Deputy Director General of the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) has called on the public, particularly tertiary students to avoid patronising programmes that have not been accredited.

Prof. Ahmed Abdulai Jinapor is emphatic that programmes that have not been accredited by the universities should not be run.

This, he explained is because accreditation is a means of ensuring there is quality in the educational system.

“The general public we want their buy-in that we are not going to patronise programmes that are not accredited. Once we have the general public going by not patronising programmes that are not accredited, I don’t think that we are going to have the problem that we have,” he said.

He also cautioned institutions that advertise unaccredited programmes to desist from doing so adding that they should only advertise accredited programmes.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has also bemoaned the continuous running of unaccredited programmes by almost all public universities.

Presently, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has over 300 programmes yet to be accredited, that’s according to Vice Chancellor Prof. Rita Akosua Dickson.

Responding to audit findings before the Public Accounts Committee most of the programmes are at various stages of accreditation describing it as an unfair suggestion for such programmes to be stopped.

“Currently we have more than 500 programmes and as we speak, we have about over 140 accredited but some of them are at various stages of accreditation.

"For example, I am able to report that we’ve been working very closely with GTEC to ensure that these programmes are accredited. 

"As we speak, we have over 100 programmes that we are expecting GTEC to mobilise faculty and come and review on our campus,” she explained.

When asked if they heeded calls to stop running the unaccredited programmes, she replied,“ A number of the programmes are re-accreditation programmes so you are running the programme, the student gets to a third or fourth year then the accreditation period expires, you don’t just in the middle of it cease running the programme.”

Also, authorities of the University of Ghana say they have taken steps to ensure the accreditation of some of the school’s programmes listed as unaccredited in the 2021 Auditor General’s report.

Speaking at the Public Accounts Committee on Tuesday, Registrar, Emelia Agyei Mensah said, the University has made sure 60 out of 80 undergraduate programmes are now accredited.

“Out of the 80, I would say that currently, we have 60 of the undergraduate programme fully accredited and the rest are in the process of being accredited,” he told the Vice-Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Samuel Atta Mills.