For many years, graduating students of the University of Ghana saw their names and degree classifications openly displayed through university channels during graduation periods. These lists were widely circulated and, in some instances, easily accessible beyond the immediate academic community.
For some, this visibility was a public badge of honour. For others, it was an uncomfortable form of exposure that lingered long after the ceremony.
That long-standing practice is now set to change. The University has announced that degree classifications will no longer be publicly displayed, with the policy applying to future graduation cycles. It is a decision that deserves commendation—not controversy.
To understand why, it helps to recall how student results and academic records have evolved over time.
In earlier years, semester results were routinely pinned to notice boards across campus. Students crowded around sheets of paper, scanning for their index numbers and grades in full public view. This arrangement reflected the limits of the time, not a deliberate choice to expose personal academic performance.
As digital systems improved, the University made a necessary transition. Semester results moved to individual student portals, allowing students to access their academic records privately, securely, and directly. Few would argue that returning semester results to public notice boards would represent progress.
Yet even as semester results became private, graduation lists continued to be published with names and classifications—first on notice boards and later online. When these lists moved to the internet, their reach extended beyond the university community, exposing graduating students’ classifications to anyone with access to a browser.
The contradiction became clear: privacy for semester performance, publicity for final outcomes.
At the heart of this debate lies a simple but often overlooked fact: a degree classification is a record of personal academic performance.
It reflects how an individual student performed against defined academic standards over time. It is not a policy decision, not an administrative act, and not a statement about how a public institution exercised authority. It is a personal outcome.
For this reason, Ghana’s information governance framework treats such records as personal data.
Both the Right to Information Act, 2019 (Act 989) and the Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) draw a clear line between information that enables public accountability and information that belongs to identifiable individuals. Academic records—grades, transcripts, classifications—fall firmly within the latter category.
The purpose of access to information laws is to open up how public institutions operate, not to expose how individuals perform within those institutions. Universities may be public bodies, but students are not public officials, and their academic outcomes are not public acts.
Public funding justifies scrutiny of standards, processes, and systems, not the indiscriminate publication of individual performance.
Once degree classifications are properly understood as personal performance data, the case for exempting them from public disclosure becomes straightforward. Publication adds little public value, but it carries real implications for dignity, reputation, and future opportunity.
Opposition to the new policy is often framed around transparency. If degree classifications are no longer public, critics ask, how can academic standards be trusted?
The answer is simple: transparency is about systems, not spectacle.
Academic credibility rests on clear grading criteria, rigorous assessment, internal and external moderation, and reliable certification. None of these is strengthened by broadcasting individual classifications. A university’s reputation is built on the robustness of its processes, not on public comparison of its graduates.
No employer, professional body, or academic institution verifies qualifications by browsing graduation lists. Verification happens through official transcripts, certificates, and authorised confirmations. Public display adds visibility, but little value.
Others appeal to tradition: this is how it has always been done. But longevity alone does not justify continuation.
There was a time when public display of results was unavoidable because no alternative existed. That time has passed. When better systems emerge, institutions are expected to adapt—not cling to practices simply because they are familiar.
Progress in education has always involved letting go of methods once they cease to serve a meaningful purpose.
A legitimate question remains: how should academic excellence be recognised during graduation ceremonies?
Traditionally, graduating students are called and acknowledged according to their degree classifications—with first-class honours students mentioned first, followed by second class (upper division), then second class (lower division), third class, and finally pass. This ordering has long been understood as a ceremonial way of signalling academic distinction.
This practice, however, must be properly understood.
Ceremonial recognition is contextual and time-bound. It occurs within a formal academic setting, before peers, faculty, and invited guests, and serves a symbolic purpose. It does not create a permanent, structured public record of every student’s performance.
That distinction matters. Recognition is not the same as publication.
Mentioning names in sequence during a ceremony—even when live-streamed—differs fundamentally from posting classifications on notice boards, websites, or brochures designed for repeated access, comparison, and indefinite circulation.
Universities can continue to recognise excellence thoughtfully—whether through ceremonial ordering, special citations, prizes, or honours sessions—without reverting to practices that permanently expose the academic outcomes of all graduates.
This logic must also extend to graduation brochures and live-streamed ceremonies.
Graduation brochures are widely distributed, retained, shared, and often archived online. Including classifications in them would simply reproduce, in another form, the exposure the new policy seeks to end.
Live-streamed ceremonies, even when recorded and shared, remain events, not databases. They are not designed for systematic retrieval or ranking. Context still matters.
If permanence alone were the test, no recognition could occur in the digital age. The sensible response is not silence, but restraint—celebrating excellence without turning academic outcomes into enduring public data.
The University’s decision reflects institutional maturity. It recognises that academic achievement is both earned and personal. By restricting degree classifications to private portals and formal verification processes, the University aligns final outcomes with the same privacy logic already applied to semester results.
This is not a retreat from accountability. It is a refinement of it.
For an institution that has consistently modernised its academic systems, this move is not radical. It is consistent.
In choosing discretion over display, the University of Ghana has not diminished transparency. It has redefined it—thoughtfully, responsibly, and in step with the realities of modern higher education.
