The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has raised strong objections to a proposed policy by the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) aimed at harmonising promotion guidelines for academic senior members across public universities.
In a letter addressed to the Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, through the UTAG National Secretariat in Accra, UTAG-KNUST questioned the rationale behind the initiative, arguing that it was introduced without adequate stakeholder consultation.
The association said GTEC’s justification that disparities exist in promotion standards across universities was “unconvincing and insufficiently grounded,” adding that differences in institutional structures were by design and should not be treated as a problem requiring uniform correction.
UTAG-KNUST further questioned why harmonisation efforts were focused specifically on academic staff promotions, suggesting that other categories of university personnel also operate under varying conditions that have not attracted similar reforms.
“We respectfully ask whether academic staff are the only category of university personnel for whom disparities exist?” the association said, arguing that public universities were established with distinct mandates, governance structures, and academic cultures.
The association warned that standardising promotion criteria across institutions risks undermining university autonomy and disregards the uniqueness that defines each institution’s academic identity.
UTAG-KNUST instead urged GTEC to prioritise broader structural challenges affecting higher education, including student-to-teacher ratios, laboratory infrastructure, staffing constraints, and overall teaching and learning conditions.
It also called for greater attention to the classification or “tiering” of Ghana’s higher education system, arguing that such an approach would be more meaningful than what it described as “peripheral interventions” on promotion guidelines.
The association specifically cited challenges at under-resourced institutions such as the University of Environment and Sustainable Development (UESD), urging the Commission to focus on strengthening capacity across the sector rather than imposing uniform standards.
UTAG-KNUST further stated that its members would be unwilling to cooperate with management in implementing the proposed harmonisation framework unless broader disparities, particularly in staffing and infrastructure, are addressed.
It maintained that existing governance frameworks already grant sufficient autonomy to university councils, insisting that the current system “is not broken and therefore does not require this form of intervention.”
