Doloquee
Monrovia — The Director General of the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE), Edward Wonkeryor, is in a heated battle with the Minister of Education, Ansu Sonii, over the implementation of a new tertiary education policy.
The policy prohibits non-doctorate degree earners from serving as presidents for any tertiary institutions. The Minister of Education, who is also the Board Chairman of the NCHE, has halted the policy, citing disruptions and no reasonable notifications.
However, the Commission has taken a defiant stance and reiterated its demand that heads of all postsecondary institutions acquire doctoral degrees.
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According to the Commission, the policy seeks to place Liberia’s higher education system into equivalence with its regional and international contemporaries.
The Commission has vowed to thrash everything that undermines the provision of quality and competitive higher education in Liberia. It has been stressing the need for heads of higher institutions in Liberia to possess earned terminal degrees from accredited institutions since 2010.
The Commission’s secretariat is in consultation with the Board of Commissioners to finalize a workable formula for the effective implementation of the staff requirement and regulations.
The NCHE’s decision follows the exposure of a slew of fake academic degrees by a Diaspora organization, the Campaigners for Academic Crimes Court in Liberia.
The independent academic watchdog group has successfully proven that numerous public officials, and university and college professors, some of which serve at the University of Liberia, have been parading the echelons of power and privilege in Liberia with fake academic credentials.
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The group has also been fighting degradation in the education system by cracking down on unlicensed and phony schools that offer bogus degrees.
The NCHE’s actions to ban non-terminal degree holders and others who possess honorary degrees in similar categories came after pledging to eliminate the rising number of tertiary institution presidents without terminal degrees as a way to stop the country’s higher education system from deteriorating.
The Commission has struggled not only, to address concerns about standards and quality but also honorary doctorate holders at leading universities, while others are from unaccredited or unverified online universities.
