How did we solve the degree conundrum before GTEC?
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We didn’t seem to have problems with our ‘booklong’ people when they touched down from their studies abroad, flashing degrees from universities we had only read about.
We believed them when they said they were professors or had PhDs, and didn’t seem to bother whether they were full professors, assistant professors, associate professors, or adjunct professors. Prof had come home, and Ghana was better for it, we hoped.
No thesis, no Professor
That was the degree honeymoon. A new sheriff has come to town–the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC)–and suddenly, we are advised to look upon anybody who wields the title of professor, PhD or Dr, like a nun in a maternity ward or a pastor driving from a brothel.
GTEC’s mandate, among other things, is to ensure that pretenders who have not toiled to sit behind a mountain of books to produce a thesis are not invited to speak in those borrowed and stolen robes or addressed as Prof, Doc, or even semi-prof. GTEC’s antennas have picked signals from a few suspects, including APC leader Dr Hassan Ayarigah, Deputy Health Minister Prof. Dr. Grace Ayensu-Danquah, former Audit Service CEO Prof. Edward Agyemang Dua, and GIFEC CEO Dr Rashid Tanko-Computer. There are many more.
In support of Dr Hassan Ayarigah’s frightening prognosis, we posit that there is nothing like a fake Dr., honorary or thesis acquired.
The other day, we asked in these columns why GTEC is not worried that our professors and PhDs who genuinely earned their credentials appear to be impeded by the ‘fake’ professors, and have not produced globally relevant research or invented anything to help cocoa farmers dry their produce.
If GTEC’s campaign is oxygenated by the fury of accredited university professors who feel cheated that some ‘fakes’ are taking their shine, then GTEC’s regulatory venom seems misplaced.
The campaign should seek to evaluate the contributions of honorary and ‘fake’ Drs to scholarship and public ethics. Would GTEC punish genuine professors who choose not to be called Prof?
While Dr Ayarigah’s impact as a leader of a political organisation and a successful entrepreneur must not excuse his use of an unearned degree, an institution-led inquiry into his educational background exposes the laxity in a system that has endorsed his many years of continued engagement in public governance and decision-making at national levels.
When he is slotted for leadership debates alongside ‘credible’ politicians, we unwittingly recognise him as a thought leader in Ghana, at least in politics.
In that exercise, his influence and impact may be recognised and rewarded with a degree or two, especially if they reflect his area of expertise.
Where there are doubts, an inquiry must target the raison d’etre of the award.
The right to use it must be defended as an intrinsic part of the honour.
Defenders of honour
Conversely, if a hairdresser is awarded an honorary degree for her groundbreaking work on hair imports, GTEC may worry if she uses the degree to do business in policy work on fisheries and aquaculture.
Similarly, a tenured professor of sociology may attract strange reviews from students if he teaches computer science with a PhD in Sociology.
His rank as full professor may not be questioned but it would be difficult to defend his contribution to computer programming. Defenders of honorary degrees have often asked: how do we properly address holders of honorary degrees when they seem to profess more than the traditional academic?
In the case of Prof Dr. Ayensu-Danquah, she had impacted many communities in Ghana and elsewhere with free medical services and other humanitarian work before her bid for the Essikado-Ketan seat.
Her impressive CV lists many earned degrees at prestigious institutions in the USA, having distinguished herself as a surgeon, heading the global surgery department at the University of Utah. She had taught at medical school.
The Americans called her professor (lecturer in Ghana).
In Ghana, she has undertaken research on breast cancer and is a member of Ghana Medical Council, where her MD, MPH, FGCPS,FICS, and FAC qualifications were recognized.
GTEC must be more interested in how Dr Ayensu-Danquah would serve the health sector as Deputy Minister, than what she intends to teach as professor in a university.
Former Liberian President, Ellen Johson Sirleaf, describes her as a double-board surgeon trained in reconstructive surgery; a trauma and burn expert.
The accomplished man
To be fair to GTEC, people needn’t proclaim to be who they are not: “Esse quam videri: to be, rather than to seem.”
However, when a society invests their collective energies in chasing after what people seem to be, they prioritize prophecies over research, and funerals over underground drainage to resolve floods.
Ghanaians love titles, and GTEC wants to help groom our tastebuds, by telling us how to properly address people by their titles, instead of what they have done with them.
What does GTEC intend to do with the ‘confiscated’ honorary degrees?
We would like to propose an honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc) for Victor Yaw Asante, Managing Director of First Bank Ghana, for his commitment to indigenous knowledge creation.
In June this year, the Bank donated GH₵100,000 to UPSA, by encouraging Ghanaian scholars to write their own textbooks for better degrees.
What is the real purpose of degrees? Put them in a kitchen cabinet and lock them up?
A doctorate degree, honorary or PhD, is are marker of the accomplished man.
To strip the accomplished man of that honour is to diminish their worth in the public space, the same place the honorary degree was awarded.
Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin
Tissues Of The Issues
bigfrontiers@gmail.com
Ottawa, Canada
