The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has expressed significant concerns regarding a proposed policy by the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC).
The proposed policy seeks to standardise promotion guidelines for senior academic members across public universities.
In a correspondence directed to the Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, via the UTAG National Secretariat in Accra, UTAG-KNUST challenged the reasoning behind this initiative, contending that it was introduced without sufficient consultation with stakeholders.
The association stated that GTEC’s claim of existing disparities in promotion standards among universities was “unconvincing and insufficiently grounded,” emphasising that variations in institutional structures are intentional and should not be viewed as an issue necessitating uniform correction.
UTAG-KNUST also raised concerns about why the harmonisation efforts were exclusively aimed at academic staff promotions, pointing out that other categories of university personnel operate under diverse conditions that have not been subject to similar reforms.
“We respectfully ask whether academic staff are the only category of university personnel for whom disparities exist?” the association enquired, asserting that public universities were founded with unique mandates, governance frameworks, and academic cultures.
The association cautioned that the standardisation of promotion criteria across institutions could jeopardise university autonomy and overlook the distinctiveness that characterises each institution’s academic identity.
UTAG-KNUST instead urged GTEC to focus on broader structural issues affecting higher education, such as student-to-teacher ratios, laboratory facilities, staffing limitations, and the overall conditions for teaching and learning.
It also emphasised the need for increased focus on the classification or “tiering” of Ghana’s higher education system, contending that this method would be more significant than what it referred to as “peripheral interventions” regarding promotion guidelines.
The association specifically pointed out the difficulties faced by under-resourced institutions like the University of Environment and Sustainable Development (UESD), urging the Commission to prioritise enhancing capacity throughout the sector instead of enforcing uniform standards.
UTAG-KNUST further expressed that its members would be reluctant to collaborate with management in executing the proposed harmonisation framework unless broader inequalities, especially in staffing and infrastructure, are resolved.
It asserted that the current governance frameworks already provide adequate autonomy to university councils, maintaining that the existing system “is not broken and therefore does not require this form of intervention.”
