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Registrar dismisses claims that accreditation of UG’s Law programme in jeopardy

Jul 26, 2011 News

“Utter Nonsense!” was the Registrar’s comment on the possibility that the University of Guyana’s Law Programme could lose its accreditation.
Vincent Alexander told Kaieteur News yesterday that there was absolutely no danger of such an occurrence. He also said that the University would give no further comment at the moment, because these are matters that the individual who expressed the opinion has brought before the courts. He went on to say “we find it strange that he has sought to raise these matters in the newspapers at this point in time”.
The comment was given in the wake of the publication of Professor Calvin Eversley’s letter in Kaieteur News on Saturday last. Eversley, who is Head of the University’s Law Department, claimed that certain decisions and actions taken by the Vice-Chancellor and the Registrar “will seriously jeopardize the accreditation and status of equivalency of the UG LL.B Degree.”
The Professor noted that his missive was intended as a “public warning to the UG Council, Vice-Chancellor and Registrar”. He said that failure by the authority figures to heed his written recommendations submitted in September 2010 after he took office as head of the Department could lead to just such a situation.
His main contention was that there were “many breaches in the admissions process”.
For quite some time prevailing opinion both inside and outside the University has been that the admissions requirements for some programmes are too low.
But the University has been pressured by the education authorities to accept passing grades for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) as sufficient for admission purposes even though many of the students entering with these grades are simply not equipped to cope with the volume and depth of the work.
The Faculty of Technology, for example, has had to put pre-emptive measures in place and arrange for primer courses in Mathematics during the summer to help close the gap between CSEC Mathematics and University level Engineering Mathematics.
Certain programmes, however, such as Law and Medicine, refuse to accept CSEC passes and demand performance at higher examination levels before students can enter the ranks, and it has been argued that this is one reason these programmes are held in such high esteem.
For instance, University of Guyana Medical School Graduates can enter post-graduate programmes and undertake residency at the University of the West Indies Medical School without writing entrance examinations, such is the confidence in their education.
Admission to the Medical Programme at the University of Guyana calls for exemplary grades at either Advanced Level (A-Levels) or Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE) failing which, students must undertake an entire year of classes in Biology at the University before they can gain admission to the programme.
Prof. Eversley in his letter also raised the point that the “Registrar and the Vice-Chancellor had proposed to create an illegal category called ‘provisional registration’”.
He pointed out that he had no idea whether or not they have received legal advice other than his on the matter, but wanted them to “let the general University community and the public know whether they sought and received competent and independent legal advice, and if so, what was the substance of this advice.”
He further challenged that “If they did not seek independent legal advice, then they must explain why not?”

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