Author(s): Moses S. K. Azameti and Dr. Emmanuel Adjei

This paper examined the effectiveness of the strategies tertiary institutions adopted for keeping and managing students’ academic records in Ghana. • The Study was based on the assumption that there was statistically significant association between type of tertiary institutions and records management strategies adopted to reduce malpractices associated with the acts of keeping and managing academic records in tertiary institutions. • The study also posits that the existing traditional theories of records keeping and management practices such as the life-cycle conceptualization including the principles of provenance and original order don’t adequately provide the relationships between strategies adopted and the needed data security measures and to forestall the current challenges that records managers face in tertiary institutions. Abstract cont. • The study was guided by an Embodied social Presence theory and Complexity theories which are allied theories instead of the life- cycle concept. • The ESP theory posits that our body is the nexus of communication, and that an embodied representation affects the perceptions of users by drawing them into a higher level of cognitive engagement in their shared activities which includes records keeping and management strategies and communication. During these processes they engage in a loop of shifting attention, they focus on the virtual and the real self, and the context of interactions. • Practitioners in recordkeeping and management now find themselves in a quagmire of focusing attention either on the virtual or the reality of alleged data falsification syndrome which has dented the truism of academic records and final educational attainments of students. Abstract cont. • Methodology/procedures. The study adopted a descriptive research design with inferential statistical analysis of data. A sample size of 1990 study participants were purposively selected from ten tertiary institutions across five regions in Ghana: This was subsequently grouped into three main clusters, thus, cluster A, (CA) representing two Public University, 800 (40.2%) Cluster B, (CB) representing two Polytechnics, and two Colleges of Education, one Nursing Training College, 635 (32.0%) and cluster C, (CC) presenting three private universities, 555 (27.9%). • The results show that majority of the institutions have policies and standards among others as part of their preliminary strategies for effective recordkeeping and management systems, besides, quality service delivery also hinges on modern equipment in places, professional competence of practitioners, volume of data and students population.