The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology(KNUST) has dismissed parts of the 2021 Auditor-General’s report that suggested that only 61 out of 360 programmes offered by the school are accredited.
According to Dr. Daniel Norris Bekoe, the University Relations Officer(URO), the claims are incorrect, insisting the school has fully complied with regulations by the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission(GTEC).
He explained that KNUST had been running the programmes for ages after initial accreditations.
However, accreditations need to be revised periodically, and KNUST has undergone all the necessary processes pending a final determination by the accreditation body.
He observed that the institution responsible for re-accreditation is the cause of the delay and the school.
“We have submitted over 468 applications for existing programmes, so when the documents are with GTEC, and they haven’t been worked on, there is a little delay. That is not to say the university is running unaccredited programmes,” Dr. Bekoe noted.
“KNUST existed long ago before the setting up of the National Accreditation Board and GTEC, so most of these programmes we are talking about have been running for over 70 years. So how can one say that these programmes that have trained some of the finest brains in this country are unaccredited?” he questioned.
The Auditor-General’s report for 2021, dated 1 June 2022, revealed that “out of the 360 programmes run by the University, only 61 have been accredited, 190 sent to National Accreditation Board (NAB) for accreditation and re-accreditation with 109 yet to be sent to NAB for accreditation.”
KNUST was also asked to “liaise with Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) to take retrospective accreditations to cover all the non-accredited certificates issued to students.”
The Auditor-General therefore “recommended to management to cease running programmes that are not accredited or having its accredited certificates expired, until they are accredited or renewed, to avoid sanctions by NAB.”
“The Auditor General asking the universities to stop running those programmes when re-accreditation applications are lying on the desks of GTEC is to say KNUST and UG should throw the over 160 thousand students on the streets. It doesn’t work that way,” Dr Bekoe replied.