The 2021 Auditor General's report revealed that some public universities were running a number of unaccredited courses for the year under review.
Two of the nation's premier public universities, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and the University of Ghana, were found culpable by the Auditor General in that regard.
But according to a Ranking Member of Parliament's Education Committee, the situation is not as it may have been projected to the public and, in many reports, raising concerns about universities running illegal courses.
Speaking on Thursday, August 31, 2022, edition of Okay FM's Ade Akye Abia, Mr Apaak explained that the situation is largely due to delays in the renewal of accreditation given to the universities to run the affected courses.
He, among other things, blamed the situation on bureaucratic delays and delays on the part of university management in applying for the renewal of accreditations.
"Usually, what happens is that, before the expiration of the accreditation given to a particular course, it is incumbent for the leadership of the university to initiate a renewal of that particular accreditation. But many of these [courses] are not new; these are courses that are already being offered. But in a lot of instances, the processes are started late. Some of them would wait to start the processes, sometimes two months before the accreditation in effect ends, and the process takes long. When they initiate the process at the National Accreditation Board, now under the National Tertiary Commission, they would also need time to do their checks to make sure that indeed the programme is worthy of getting a renewal of its accreditation or if it is a new programme, it satisfies the conditions of accredited," he explained.
He noted that usually, at the time of auditing, the universities have courses that are running but have their accreditation renewals pending, thereby accounting for their classification as unaccredited courses.
"So it is when the audit is performed at a time when the request has gone into consideration for accreditation, and yet the accreditation has not been offered, clearly the Auditor General or the auditors will flag those particular programmes as not having been credited," Mr Apaak who is the Member of Parliament for Builsa South said.
He, however, stated that the management of the universities could not entirely shift the blame as they rather failed to initiate the renewal of accreditations ahead of time to forestall such occurrences.
"So what we need to tell some of the universities, and this is where I express some disappointment because they should know that they have been doing this, not today. So they should know. Definitely, some people have been sleeping on their jobs. I would not exonerate the universities management. They can start the processes at least a year before the accreditations expire. So they ought to make sure that they are also up and doing; they are monitoring the timelines so that they can put in the renewal requests a year ahead of the expirations, and this is allowed," he stated.
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Mr Apaak further sought to allay fears of concerns noting that the situation would not have any effect on the value of degrees awarded to students for such programmes.
"In the meantime, because a lot of these courses are courses that are already being offered, the accreditation can be given retroactively. So students should not panic. It is not going to affect their degrees and the value of their degrees," he added.
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KNUST (left), UG (right)