“CSA Will Start Scrutinizing Credentials”—Prof. Wonkeryor -Prof. Wonkeryor, Says exercise to begin at UL and TU
MONROVIA– Professor Edward Lama Wonkeryor, Director General of the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) has said his institution has put in place efforts to ensure that the Civil Service Agency (CSA) begin to scrutinize and do not accept credentials from unauthorized institutions that continue to illegally operate higher education programs in the country and that plans are at advanced stage to implement credential verification exercises at public and private institutions of higher learning in the country beginning with the University of Liberia and The Tubman University in Harper, Maryland County.
“Accordingly, we would like to appeal to the Civil Service Agency and other employers to scrupulously verify applicants’ credentials with the NCHE as a prerequisite for job placements in Liberia,” Prof. Dr. Edward Lama Wonkeryor said.
Speaking recently at the 6th Commencement convocation of the Grand Bassa University in Buchanan, Professor Wonkeryor disclosed that the focus of the credential audit exercises is to verify the genuineness of credentials and proper placement of administrators and faculty of the institutions of higher learning in Liberia.
He further said “I want to use this opportunity to warn against the continued operation of unauthorized and bogus higher education institutions in the country by persons who don’t mean well for our learning population. The NCHE frowns on the awarding of fake credentials by higher education institutions that are not granted permits by the Commission to operate and award degrees. We consider it an academic crime for people to keep misleading our students and giving them vain documents that actually bear no value as academic credentials.
“I am calling on high school graduates particularly to ascertain from the National Commission on Higher Education the legitimacy of any higher education institution before enrolling therein, because if you don’t, the credential you get from a bogus HEI will do you no good,” he said.
The consummate scholar has consistently lambasted the wave of fake institutions and degrees flooding the academic and public space in recent times and has vowed that his administration at NCHE will make sure that those found in this ignoble acts will not be allowed to go on unchecked like in the past. He lamented that as lofty as the project is to weed out the rot in the education sector of the country, his agency is being challenged by the low budgetary, manpower and logistics support to his agency which has in no small way impeded what has been earmarked to undertake and implement.
Professor Wonkeryor, in addition to asking for more funding, has also recommended that the NCHE be given a full ministry status so as to properly exert its oversight functions, monitoring and evaluating higher institutions in the country.
The NCHE is the statutory arm of the Liberian Government that regulates and supervises higher education institutions, and is charged with the responsibilities to license, accredit, monitor and evaluate all post-secondary institutions within the Republic of Liberia. The higher education sector of Liberia comprises 54 tertiary institutions that include polytechnics, colleges, universities.
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