Private university colleges and quality assurance mechanisms in Ghana

Abstract

The focus of this research was on the mechanisms used by Ghana’s two higher education regulatory institutions, and the selected mentoring public sector universities (hereinafter referred to as ‘PSU’s) to ensure quality standards of education in private university colleges (hereinafter referred to as ‘PUC’s) in Ghana. Against this background, the aim of this research project was to investigate the existing quality assurance (hereinafter referred to as ‘QA’) mechanisms used by the National Council for Tertiary Education (hereinafter referred to as ‘NCTE’), the National Accreditation Board (hereinafter referred to as the ‘NAB’) and selected mentoring PSU’s in an attempt to demonstrate how these mechanisms could be strengthened to ensure successful application of QA at PUC’s in Ghana. The interpretive frameworks of this project are constructivism and pragmatism and the research design was qualitative. Accordingly, the methods that were adopted for data collection included; semi-structured personal interviews, document analysis and a literature review. Data were collected from six PUC’s, the two mentoring PSU’s to which the sampled PUC’s were affiliated at the time of this inquiry, the NCTE, the NAB, as well as the assessors who had ever worked for the NAB within the last five years at the time of data collection. Since the current study is based on qualitative grounded theory research, no definite sample size was determined. As a result, the process of data collection and analysis continued throughout the research process until a point of data saturation was attained. At the time of data saturation, twenty-four participants were sampled and interviewed from the four groups of participants. Results from the four sets of data showed that, despite the existence of the two regulatory institutions with a mandate to ensure quality standards in all higher education institutions in Ghana, and the existence of comprehensive policies, the gaps in the National Accreditation Board Act 744 of 2007 (hereinafter referred to as the 2007 National Accreditation Board Act) and the National Council for Tertiary Education Act 454 of 1993 (hereinafter referred to as the 1993 National Council for Tertiary Education Act) coupled with inadequate resources affected their effectiveness. There were also shortcomings in the roles played by both the mentoring PSU’s and the mentored PUC’s in ensuring quality standards in the PUC’s. Based on the key themes that emerged from the analysis of the research data and the challenges identified with the existing QA framework, the Culture of Quality (hereinafter referred to as ‘CoQ’) framework (see Chapter 7, Figure 7.9) and interventions that could contribute to ensure quality standards in PUC’s in Ghana were proposed. The study has also brought to the fore the voice of PUC’s with regard to their challenges and their suggestions that could be factored into policy development for effective collaboration with the regulatory institutions for ensuring quality standards in PUC’s in Ghana.