The National Accreditation Board (NAB) has found out that some private tertiary institutions in the country are operating with unqualified lecturers and staff, while others are admitting students who do not have passes in the requisite core courses. In one university college, a quality audit team set up by the NAB found that 22 students who were about to graduate had not met the qualifications. The Executive Secretary of the NAB, Mr Kwame Dattey, told the Daily Graphic in Accra on Monday that the board had stopped the graduation of the students and suspended fresh admissions to the institution until it met the standards of the board. The audit team was set up to monitor standards and find out whether tertiary institutions in the country were operating according to the guidelines of the NAB and ensure that they comply. The team also visits tertiary institutions at short notice to find out whether standards given by the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) are being followed, inspects the infrastructure of institutions and the qualification of staff. On concerns over the proliferation of private tertiary institutions in the country, Mr Dattey explained that the law establishing the NAB did not limit the number of tertiary institutions to be given accreditation and said it was not true that the board was looking on unconcerned over the state of affairs. The executive secretary said what the board was doing was to intensify monitoring to flush out institutions without accreditation, but admitted that it was facing challenges in doing so because of the lack of adequate funding and staff. Mr Dattey said the NAB did not have adequate funding to counter-advertise against those institutions which advertise in the Media. “Doing that will wipe out the chunk of our operational income,” he said. Some media organisations, he explained, did not accept rejoinders, except through paid advertisement, and “that presents a major difficulty to us.” He, therefore, appealed to the media to partner the NAB in that direction, saying, “the media must make some scarifies to help us get rid of charlatans.” Though the NAB sometimes published the list of accredited institutions, Mr Dattey said that was not enough to counter the aggressive advertising by unaccredited tertiary institutions. Asked why the board would not decentralise its operations, he said it was cautious about doing so because of the possibility of financial influence. He asked students who wanted to enroll into tertiary institutions to approach the NAB whether or not the institutions of their choice were accredited. Source: Daily Graphic/Ghana