The Ghanaian Minaret

Accra: Abdul Aziz Nasir, a third-year Information Technology student at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), has developed a location-based electronic attendance system (LEAS) that uses geo-location technology to track students’ attendance in real time. 

The groundbreaking innovative system, now officially adopted by UPSA, ensured that lecturers could verify students’ physical presence in class, eliminating the possibility of remote sign-ins.

Impressively, Nasir created the system as his final-year project even before advancing to his fourth year.

The school announced the innovation during a matriculation ceremony of a record-breaking 12,009 fresh students for the 2024/25 academic year—the highest intake in the university’s history.

Speaking at the 2025 Matriculation Ceremony on Friday, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Kwaku Mensah Mawutor, attributed the record enrolment to UPSA’s growing reputation as a leading institution for professional and higher education in Ghana.

The university was founded in 1965 as a private professional business education tuition provider and was taken over by the government in 1978 by the Institute of Professional Studies Decree, 1978 (SMCD 200).

It was subsequently established as a tertiary institution with a mandate to provide tertiary and professional education in accounting, management, and other related areas of study by the Institute of Professional Studies Act (Act 566), 1999.

The then IPS had been offering tuition for business professional programmes.

In September 2005, the then institute introduced bachelor’s degree programmes to give meaning to the IPS Act 566.

It received a presidential charter in September 2008, conferring on it the status of a public university.

The university offers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in several programmes.

The development of the programmes coupled with trends in tertiary education at both local and international levels, called for an amendment of the existing Act 566 of 1999.

Subsequently, the University of Professional Studies Act, 2012 (ACT 850) was enacted to rename the institute as University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA).

UPSA introduced a “dual qualification scheme” for students for the 2019/2020 academic year.

The policy is to make students who enrol in a degree programme.simultaneously pursue a corresponding professional programme such as ACCA, ICAG, CIM, CIMA, ICSA among others, as an additional course, thus graduating with both a degree and a chartered certificate.