The National Accreditation Board (NAB), says it will start an audit of the academic certificates of all lecturers in tertiary institutions from next year with an objective to eliminating lecturers with fake credentials from the system.
The Executive Secretary of NAB, Dr. Kingsley Nyarko, disclosed this to journalists in the Ashanti region.
This was after some officials from NAB and the management of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, KNUST, had a discussion on the evaluation of new academic undergraduate engineering programmes proposed for introduction in the University.
The NAB Executive Secretary noted that the quality of knowledge lecturers with fake certificates would impart negatively on students.
Dr. Nyarko blamed the media for allowing individuals to use honorary degrees indiscriminately, and explained instances where such degrees could be used.
He disclosed that NAB plans to set a benchmark for programmes of study in all tertiary institutions towards standardisation of contents to ensure that students acquire the same level of knowledge in any given programme regardless of the institution of study.
Dr. Nyarko called on tertiary institutions to develop what he calls ‘dynamic’ or ‘a living document that must not only respond to the needs of today’s industry, but also the changing times to make their products suitable for the job market.
Vice Chancellor of KNUST, Professor Kwasi Obiri Danso, appealed to NAB to intervene to ensure that the university gets clearance to recruit additional academic staff to meet the growing students population which he disclosed, shot up from last year’s admission of seven thousand to 16,800 this academic year.
Prof. Obiri Danso mentioned new Undergraduate Engineering programmes to be introduced soon as Automobile Management, Marine, Railway, Medical Imaging among others.
