The Parliamentary Select Committee on Education has thrown its weight behind the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) to protect academic integrity in the country.

Members of the committee expressed concern about the tendency to commercialise tertiary education certificates, such as the acquisition of PhD and degrees in tertiary institutions, including some public universities.

They also expressed concern that some universities went to the extent of arranging for people to write the theses for their students.

On honorary PhDs, the committee assured the GTEC that it had its backing to clean the tertiary space to instil trust and integrity in the country’s tertiary education.

Making a statement at a working visit to the headquarters of the GTEC in Accra, a member of the committee and a former Deputy Education Minister in charge of TVET, Prof. Kingsley Nyarko, assured the GTEC that it had the backing of the committee.

“Mr Chairman, some of the qualifications we are churning out are in doubt, and something has to be done to ensure that we do not water down the value of our qualifications,” he told the meeting.

The committee, led by its Chairman Peter Nortsu-Kotoe, included the Vice-Chairman Joseph Kwame Kumah and the Ranking Member Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum.

The rest were Dr Fred Kyei Asamoah, Edem R.K. Kpolosu, Professor Nyako and Abdul-Fatawu Alhassan.

They discussed a wide range of issues of concern to them in the tertiary education space and sought to know what the GTEC was doing to address those concerns.

Prof. Nyarko also raised the issue of satellite campuses of the traditional universities throughout the country, expressing concerns about the quality at those centres.

Raising objection to the mentoring of colleges of education by some traditional universities, Mr Nortsu-Kotoe said it did not make sense.

“I have always been opposed to the mentorship by the University of Ghana and the University for Development Studies over the Colleges of Education. I do not know what they are mentoring,” he said.

He cited the Accra College of Education, mentored by the University of Ghana, questioning their professional capability over those in the colleges.

Mr Nortsu-Kotoe, therefore, called for a second look at the arrangement, where a university professor was given the role to supervise his colleague professor in the college of education.

Dr Adutwum explained that the intention was not for the mentoring arrangement to continue in perpetuity, but rather to serve as a stopgap measure during the conversion of the Colleges of Education.

He, however, supported Mr Nortsu-Kotoe’s position, stating that it was ridiculous that a college that had been in existence for over 100 years should be mentored by a university that had not been in existence for even half as long.

Responding to the concerns, the Director-General of the GTEC, Prof. Ahmed Jinapor, admitted that all the concerns raised by the committee members were legitimate.

Touching on the commercialisation of degrees and PhDs in some universities, he said the commission was also aware of it, giving the assurance that GTEC was committed to carrying out its quality control role.

“However, we always say that the universities must take the onus upon themselves to ensure that the certificates that they issue are credible,” Prof. Jinapor added.

Speaking on the satellite campuses springing up on every corner in the country, the GTEC Director-General stated that currently, there were 321 tertiary education institutions in the country offering various tertiary certificates.

He said it was therefore clear that those satellite campuses were there to address any shortage of the provision of tertiary education, but an avenue of “money making.”

Prof. Jinapor said, for instance, that there were some satellite campuses of the traditional universities cited close to institutions they were mentoring, explaining that GTEC had cracked the whip on most of such satellite campuses, which were being operated at unauthorised venues.