The National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) has warned that the National Accreditation Board (NAB) will withdraw its accreditation and recognition for any university in the country which fails to comply with its directive on admissions. The admission requirement pegs cut-off grades for university admission at ‘D’ and ‘C6’ for Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSSCE) and West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) holders respectively. “The directive is not a new one. The admission requirements have not changed; we are just bringing sanity into university admissions in the country,” Prof. Mahama Duwiejua, the Executive Secretary of the NCTE, told the Daily Graphic in Accra. He said contrary to the concerns raised by the Conference of Heads of Private Universities (CHPUG), Ghana that the NCTE and the NAB had reviewed admission requirements, the two bodies were reminding the universities to maintain standards. He said the two institutions were only trying to bring sanity into the admission process for students who wanted to have university education and also to remind the institutions of the old standard that was in existence, but had been overlooked over the years. He argued that the two regulatory bodies did not need research to enforce laid down standards. According to him, contrary to the existing guideline, some of the universities were admitting students with grades E in the SSSCE and D7 and E8 in the WASSCE, respectively. In that respect, he stated, the council decided to have a national standard for admissions. “We are not saying that people with E8 admitted cannot cope with academic work; we are just saying that the universities should, maintain the grades given to them,” he stated. He said the directive that mature students need Mathematics and English as requirements for admission had been in the system for a long time, but some of the universities have failed to apply it. He, therefore, urged public universities to critically examine, the standards of the private universities affiliated to them. Prof. Duwiejua said the council had not responded to a proposal sent to it on the matter because its general council was yet to take a decision on a report by the council’s academic committee on the issue, adding that the council would next month take a final decision whether to vary the grades or maintain them. He said the decision would not in any way cripple university education in the country as most students who found themselves in deprived schools found it financially difficult to attend private universities. “Besides, the public universities have a quota for students from deprived schools and even they have to meet the minimum requirement,” he stated. Last week, the Conference of Heads of Private Universities, Ghana (CHPUG) criticised what they described as a new policy directive by the NCTE and NAB that pegged cut-off grades for university admission at ‘D’ and ‘C6’ for Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSSCE) and West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) holders respectively. The heads of Private Universities said the policy had the potential of crippling access to university education in the country, especially for students from underprivileged schools. “With this new directive, both the public and private universities in Ghana will have no choice, but to deny access to tertiary education to thousands of young Ghanaians,” the Vice-chancellor of Wisconsin International University College, Prof. Kaku S. Konoe, said at a Press conference. Source: Daily Graphic/Ghana