Doctoral candidates of the Doctor of Philosophy in Public Administration, Governance and Leadership programme of the School of Public Service and Governance at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration have petitioned the Governing Council of the Institute over the failure of management to resolve a longstanding dispute within faculty which has affected the students who are part of the inaugural cohort of the programme from having any chance of graduating since their enrollment during the 2015/2016 academic year. The doctoral programme which started in 2014 takes a maximum duration of four years to complete; up to eight years for part-time students. However due to GIMPA’s management decision to alter the structure of the programme midway, the period for completion for majority of the students was extended further making some students remain in the programme for nearly a decade with no sight of graduation.
The petition seeks for GIMPA to provide a clear roadmap towards the successful completion of the programme by the students so far about 60 of them in number who have passed their comprehensive exams pending approval of their thesis and external assessment before graduation. Since its inception, a total of 102 students were admitted into the PhD programme that saw only 16 of them graduate to-date. According to sources familiar with the matter, the current Rector of GIMPA, Prof. Samuel Kwaku Bonsu, on assuming office in 2021 introduced some new requirements one of which was setting up an Ad hoc Committee where he was quoted as saying that, the programme as he met it “lacked quality” and the candidates “were not good enough”, therefore the ad hoc committee was supposed to serve as an additional layer in the PhD thesis approval process. The committee was originally formed for quality assurance but the PhD candidates noticed a shift in the committee’s mandate from quality assurance to supervisory which they raised as a concern in a meeting with the deputy rector on 7 May 2025 proposing that, “only completed theses should be submitted to them, not proposals” should the ad hoc committee become institutionalised by the university. The deputy rector then assured the students of escalating their concern in a stakeholder engagement he would convene to discuss a possible dissolution of the committee, and address other related matters there as well.
The dissolution of the ad hoc committee led to the creation of a ‘Pre-Viva’ system within the Office of the Deputy Rector that will appoint a supervisor to vet the PhD theses before referring same to another panel to hear the students’ defense then on to an external examiner for final grading. Candidates that emerged successfully from the external examiner’s grading would go on to graduate. However, since these new requirements were introduced last year, no PhD candidate of the Public Administration, Governance and Leadership programme has graduated after 2018 that saw not more than 8 candidates graduate. Following their May 7th meeting with the deputy rector, the PhD candidates wrote to the chairman of the GIMPA Governing Council on 18 July 2025 urging the council to take “all necessary steps” including instructing the key individuals who may have inadvertently created a stumbling block with the Ad hoc Committee to ensure clear lines of progress and graduation of the PhD candidates from the programme by end of year 2025.
The petitioners alluded to the formation of the ad hoc committee as a bottleneck which has held candidates back for about three years. “It is significant to note that for the past 3 years, every activity on the PhD course particularly presentation of research proposal and thesis have stopped mainly due to the bottlenecks created by [sic] disruptive Ad hoc Committee”, they stated.
The institute in a response said an internal arrangement for managing doctoral dissertations at SPSG was being implemented. According to GIMPA’s Acting Legal and Compliance Officer, Lom Nuku Ahlijah, the internal arrangement as agreed upon between the deputy rector and the Dean of SPSG, the defense of doctoral proposals and clearance of same are being handled at the school level, while broader reforms regarding doctoral dissertation quality assurance and academic oversight are being finalised. Meanwhile, a subcommittee has been setup by the governing council to look into the issue and due to submit a report in two weeks.