By Dr. Chris Tokpah
Liberia’s National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) was established with a clear mandate: to regulate, accredit, and ensure quality across the nation’s universities and colleges. In principle, this makes NCHE the guardian of standards, protecting students, employers, and the public from substandard institutions.
In practice, Liberia’s model has created a structural contradiction. The Commission is not just the referee; it is also a player. By law and practice, NCHE representatives sit on the Boards of Trustees of all public higher education institutions. This arrangement creates a conflict of interest. A regulator cannot impartially judge an institution’s performance if it is simultaneously part of its governance. To borrow from football, it is like allowing the referee to be a striker on one of the teams. Real Madrid fans will understand this phenomenon since that is mostly how they win the Champions League.
How Other Countries Do It
Joke aside, other systems avoid this problem by keeping regulators at arm’s length:
- In Kenya, the Commission for University Education regulates externally, with no trustee roles
- In Uganda, the National Council for Higher Education governs separately
- In Australia, regulators do not sit inside university governance
- In Europe, boards may include outside stakeholders, but regulators remain external
- In South Korea, a council of university presidents exists, but it is cooperative, not regulatory
In my review of practices elsewhere, Liberia is the only country I found where members of the accrediting body sit on the Boards of Trustees of higher education institutions. This makes Liberia’s model unusual but problematic because it undermines the credibility of both governance and regulation.
The Role of Boards of Trustees
Boards of Trustees are the ultimate decision-making bodies of universities. They:
- Set strategy by approving missions, goals, and policies
- Oversee finances such as budgets, tuition, and major investments
- Hire and evaluate leadership, including presidents or vice chancellors
- Ensure accountability through compliance with laws and standards
- Advocate for the institution by building partnerships and securing resources
In short, trustees advance the institution’s interests, while regulators are supposed to police those interests for the public good. When NCHE sits as a trustee, its regulatory impartiality is compromised.
The Results So Far
Recently, several institutions had their licenses revoked, but none were public. That might suggest that all public universities are producing quality graduates, yet we know that is not the case. The absence of sanctions reinforces the perception that NCHE’s trustee role shields public institutions from proper scrutiny.
At the same time, Liberia has seen rapid growth in tertiary institutions, many of questionable quality. Yet enforcement appears uneven: private colleges face suspension while public universities, where NCHE holds trustee seats, continue without sanctions. This undermines confidence among students, parents, employers, and international partners.
The Accreditation Gap
A deeper problem sits in the rules themselves. Under NCHE guidelines, licensure is required, but accreditation is optional. Licensure is simply permission to open your doors. Once a university meets basic requirements such as registering with the government and showing a plan, it can receive a license and legally enroll students.
Accreditation is different. It is a much deeper and ongoing process that looks at whether the institution has qualified faculty, adequate facilities, sound governance, and programs that meet national and international standards. It is reviewed periodically to ensure institutions continue to maintain quality over time.
The problem is that in Liberia, institutions stop at licensure because NCHE does not require accreditation. I stand corrected, but I do not believe any institution has ever pursued this optional step, which demands manpower, resources, and a long-term commitment that many leaders prefer to spend elsewhere.
A school may be licensed with only one classroom and a few part-time teachers, but accreditation would ask tougher questions:
- Does it have enough qualified staff to run a real university
- Are the courses and majors relevant to the country’s needs
- Are the courses being delivered in the way they were intended
- Are graduates able to demonstrate the knowledge and skills they were supposed to acquire
- Are graduates prepared to meet the needs of the workforce
Without this process, students assume that a degree from a “licensed” school must be good, when no one has verified the quality. Employers are left guessing whether a graduate’s degree represents real competence. It is the educational equivalent of calling someone a doctor simply because they own a stethoscope, without checking whether they can diagnose malaria or treat a child with pneumonia.
The Way Forward
Liberia can fix this without dismantling NCHE. The reforms needed are clear:
- Remove NCHE from the Boards of Trustees to maintain neutrality
- Make accreditation mandatory and periodic so every institution is reviewed regularly, not just once
- Empower Boards with independent stakeholders such as alumni, employers, and community leaders, not regulators
Conclusion
Liberia’s higher education sector cannot afford conflicted governance structures, even if the intent was originally to “help institutions grow.” The role of NCHE must be clarified: it is a regulator, not a co-manager. For Liberia to raise standards, attract credible partnerships, and prepare graduates for a competitive world, it must fix this fallacy. As one unknown author has observed: “Destroying any nation does not require the use of atomic bombs or the use of long-range missiles… it only requires lowering the quality of education… Patients die at the hands of such doctors; Buildings collapse at the hands of such engineers; Money is lost at the hands of such accountants and economists; Humanity dies at the hands of such religious scholars; Justice is lost at the hands of such judges. The collapse of education is the collapse of the nation!” The message is clear. The referee must step off the pitch, return to the sidelines, and do what referees do best: enforce the rules fairly, consistently, and transparently.
About the Author
Dr. Chris Tokpah is the Associate Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness at Delaware County Community College in Pennsylvania. He holds a Ph.D. in Program Evaluation and Measurement, an MBA with an emphasis in Management Information Systems, and a B.Sc. in Mathematics. Dr. Tokpah also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Research Methods and Statistics in the Ph.D. program at Delaware Valley University. He is an independent consultant who supervised baseline studies and evaluations sponsored by the World Bank, IDA, Geneva Global, USAID, and the African Development Bank. He is a co-owner of the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Policy (CENREP), a Liberian consulting firm that specializes in strategic planning, monitoring, evaluation, social science research, and training services. His email address is ctokpah@cenrepliberia.org.
