Professor of Finance at the University of Ghana Business School, Godfred Bokpin, has expressed support for the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission’s (GTEC) plan to sensitise the public on the use of honorary titles.

According to him, many recipients of the honorary titles adopt them without fully appreciating their implications.

Speaking on JoyNews' Newsfile on Saturday, August 23, Prof. Bokpin said the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) must step up efforts in sensitisation and public awareness to ensure that the public understands the proper use of such distinctions.

“I think that there should be a lot of sensitisation. A lot of people have used these honorary [titles], maybe without properly understanding the implications. I am sure GTEC will do a lot of sensitisation, publication and all of that,” he said.

Drawing comparisons with practices in other countries, the finance professor noted that recipients of honorary doctorates abroad often avoid styling themselves as “Doctor”, instead focusing on their output and contributions.

“Elsewhere, people go through all of these and they don’t even refer to themselves as Dr. They are doctors, alright, but they just write their names and move on, because the whole thing is performance; the whole thing is productivity,” Prof. Bokpin explained.

He criticised what he described as Ghana’s overemphasis on titles at the expense of performance and productivity, blaming it on the country’s incentive structures.

“Unfortunately for us, we are not driven by all of these. It is because of the incentive mechanism we have put in place that people are responding to. So you are a doctor—yeah, that gives you a certain privilege or respect or accomplishment; meanwhile, there is no performance or productivity to that,” he argued.

Prof. Bokpin added that Ghana has reached a point where the pursuit of titles appears to overshadow the pursuit of excellence.

“We are at the point where titles carry anointing. The drive is to acquire titles by whatever means. It is easier to meet somebody who has two or three master’s degrees. It is simply because of the incentive mechanism we have put in place as a country, which does not put a premium on productivity,” he said.