UPSA blocks graduation of 178 students over altered academic results

The University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) has withheld the graduation of 178 postgraduate students after an investigation uncovered the widespread alteration of more than 500 academic results, Vice-Chancellor Prof. John Kwaku Mensah Mawutor announced at the university’s 18th Congregation on Saturday, September 26, 2026.

Mawutor told the gathering that some of the implicated students had admitted paying money to have their results changed, while others confessed to collecting money from fellow students to facilitate the manipulation. Some denied involvement, he said.

“Some unscrupulous students and some unscrupulous individuals breached our system by hijacking our system and changing results in our system,” Mawutor said.

The Vice-Chancellor described the breach as a serious assault on academic integrity and said management could not allow the affected students to graduate while investigations and disciplinary processes continue.

“This is highly unacceptable, especially at UPSA,” he said. “Some of these culprits were supposed to graduate today, but through the hard work of our ISTD team and the investigative committee, we have withheld their graduation until further notice.”

According to Mawutor, the university’s IT team, led by Director James Amena, worked intensively for weeks to trace and restore every affected result. He said the team sometimes had to work around midnight to recover the system from the perpetrators.

The Vice-Chancellor acknowledged that UPSA had experienced similar breaches in the past, but said the scale of the latest incident was unprecedented. “This is a very, very unfortunate incident, which to me is not the first time, but this time, the magnitude is very, very significant,” he said.

The case echoes a 2017 scandal in which UPSA dismissed 22 final-year students for hacking into the university’s grading system to manipulate their results. Those students reportedly paid between GH¢2,000 and GH¢4,000 to a hacker to alter their grades for the 2015/2016 academic year. The university at the time described the act as an attempt to “undermine the university’s student information system in order to manipulate various grades in their favour.”

The latest development comes amid growing concerns about academic fraud in Ghana’s tertiary institutions. Earlier this year, the University of Ghana sanctioned 32 students for examination malpractice, with some failing all first-semester papers. In a separate case, a lecturer at Ghana Christian University College filed a lawsuit seeking to halt the school’s graduation ceremony over alleged academic fraud and regulatory violations.

UPSA was founded in 1965 as the Institute of Professional Studies (IPS) by Nana Opoku-Ampomah. It was taken over by the government in 1978 and received a Presidential Charter in September 2008. It has since grown into one of Ghana’s leading public universities, with a student population of about 11,000.

Mawutor assured the university community that management would continue to take steps to protect the credibility of UPSA’s academic records and preserve the institution’s integrity.

The university has not yet announced a timeline for the completion of disciplinary proceedings or indicated when the affected students may be permitted to graduate.