Ellen Hagan, CEO of L’aine Services has PhD from unaccredited institution

Weeks of investigation by ghanabusinessnews.com has uncovered that Ghana’s topmost human resource consultant, Ellen Hagan, is using a doctorate degree acquired from an unaccredited institution.

The investigation formed part of a series of stories being carried by ghanabusinessnews.com about academic falsity and fabrication in Ghana.

Her social media accounts, her website and public profiles in her quarterly magazine HR Focus advertise her as ‘Dr. Mrs. Ellen Hagan.’ According to her, she received a PhD in Humanities from the Pan African Bible Seminary (PABS) in a year that she herself could not readily recollect when asked; as she said she either gained it in 2011 or 2013. She suggested (albeit implicitly) her inability to recollect this information was the result of aging and the demands of rigorous work.

Who is Ellen Hagan?

Ellen Hagan is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of L’aine Services Limited, arguably Ghana’s leading human resource consultancy and recruitment agency. The firm was founded over two decades ago and is a member of Ghana’s Club 100 as the only HR consultancy company among the elite club of businesses.

According to Mrs Hagan, between 2011 and 2013, she won as many as 28 awards; 15 of which she considers prestigious including being named the 2011 CIMG Marketing Woman of the Year. In July 2017, she was given the Yaa Asantewaa Award at the Exclusive Men of the Year award for being the ‘ultimate woman’.

Doctorate degree

In an interaction with the award-winning human resource expert in her office, she could not articulate clearly what her doctoral thesis was about except that as a marriage counsellor she decided to focus on the institution of marriage, the importance of marriage and why many young people were not being encouraged to marry but to ‘coexist’ (perhaps a reference to the phenomenon known as cohabitation) for her doctoral thesis. According to PABS, Mrs Hagan earned the doctorate degree after one year of studying

Pan African Bible Seminary

Ghanabusinessnews.com reached out to the Pan African Bible Seminary to ascertain the credibility of the institution. In an interview with Frederick Akakpo, its vice chancellor, he admitted that since its establishment in 2009, the Pan African Bible Seminary has never been accredited by the National Accreditation Board in Ghana to run degree programmes. He also disclosed that, the school is owned and operated by the Pan African Clergy Council and Bible Seminary which has been listed among many other institutions by Ghana’s National Accreditation Board as unaccredited.

According to ‘Dr’ Akakpo, the Pan African Bible Seminary ceased its Humanities programme in 2014 after the accreditation board’s blacklisting and now focuses solely on religious programmes tailored towards Christian leaders.

He said: “The accreditation board has come out with some guidelines and that is what we are doing now. From that time they came out with that statement, we have held on our [Humanities] programmes. They said we are not accredited locally and if our institution wants to operate in Ghana, [we] have to go through the National Accreditation Board. So we have respected their regime and since they came out with that ruling, we are not working on that Humanities courses anymore. We are strictly working with our religious courses now.”

He however mentioned that Ellen Hagan gained her degree in 2013, a year prior. According to Akakpo, at the time that Ellen Hagan gained the doctorate degree, the institution had an international accreditation from the Association of Independent Christian Colleges and Seminaries in the United States.

But investigations by ghanabusinessnews.com however reveals that the Association of Independent Christian Colleges and Seminaries (AICCS) is not accredited in the United States to be an accreditation granting agency by US authorities. The AICCS itself has a disclaimer on its website that says “…AICCS has never applied for affiliation with any federal government agency. AICCS, therefore, is not recognized by the United States Department of Education.”

Yesterday, Tuesday September 26, Frederick Akakpo told ghanabusinessnews.com that Mrs Hagan has been ‘issued with a letter to present her work for a review.’

Doctoral supervisor

Ellen Hagan, says the supervisor of her thesis was ‘Dr Markwei.’ In an interview with Frederick Akakpo, he confirmed that the supervisor was Reverend ‘Dr’ Ebenezer Markwei.

According to Springs College for Innovation and Academic Excellence, where Markwei is a council member, he gained his doctorate degree in Divinity from the Truth Bible College in Jacksonville, Florida in the United States.

However, further investigations by ghanabusinessnews.com have found that Truth Bible College has previously been listed as not accredited to run degree-granting programmes in the United States. A search on the Department of Education’s online database of all accredited post-secondary institutions in the US did not produce any result for Truth Bible College. The investigations also found that the city of Jacksonville has become a mecca for degree-mills and unaccredited institutions, a situation that has been described as deeply worrying by the authorities in the US.

The Classmate

According to Ellen Hagan, the immediate past head of the Ghana National Fire Service, Albert Brown Gaisie was a classmate of hers during her days at the Pan African Bible Seminary. She described him as ‘an honourable man’ who would not have gotten involved with PABS (where according to Hagan, he won an award for the best thesis of the year) if it was not accredited. A profile of Gaisie on the website of the Fire Service lists the ‘Pan African Seminary’ as the institution he gained a PhD in Humanities from.

Academic voyeurs and pimps

“Individuals and unaccredited institutions who are engaged in these activities are academic voyeurs and pimps, respectively”, says Dr. Prosper Yao Tsikata, Assistant Professor of Communication at Valdosta State University in the United States.

In 2016, he co-wrote an investigative report with Dr Kobla Dotse that explored the phenomenon of unaccredited or dubious academic institutions and the use of certification from these institutions.

Dr Tsikata describes the phenomenon as ‘an epidemic that is governed by ignorance, self-flattery, lack of shame and a complete erosion in the Ghanaian honour code system…aided by an uncritical media.”

He added that it was impossible for anyone to finish a PhD within one year as a doctorate generally took a minimum of three years and as long as seven years to be completed. Although he stopped short at describing degree awarded from unaccredited institutions as ‘fake’, he said the lack of authenticity and legitimacy presupposed the presence of ‘the deceptive, the corrupt, and the spurious.’

Ellen Hagan has been contacted by ghanabusinessnews.com to respond to the findings of this investigation, what she knew about the accreditation status of the Pan African Bible Seminary before enrolling and whether as Ghana’s topmost human resource consultant she should have held herself to a higher standard. She has continuously refused to respond.

By Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu
Copyright ©2017 by Creative Imaginations Publicity
All rights reserved. This news item or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in reviews.