Towards a new undergraduate ICT Curriculum for Universities of Technology in South Africa

Abstract

This paper presents salient aspects of the national discourse around the development of a suite of industry-oriented ICT vocational programmes to be hosted and delivered mainly by Universities of Technology in South Africa. The curriculum development effort was commissioned by the Higher Education ICT Association1 (HEICTA), a consortium of Universities of Technology2 and Comprehensive Universities3, in collaboration with broad representation from the national ICT industry. The curriculum model is referenced to the latest South African “Framework for Qualification Standards in Higher Education” (HEQF) [1]. The curriculum model furthermore provides an interpretation of the role of Universities of Technology in the context of the South African Higher Education landscape based on the seminal works of Roy du Pré [2, 3]. The curriculum development process is also specifically informed by the CSIR4 Meraka Institute’s “ICT Research & Development and Innovation (RDI) Implementation Roadmap” project [4], where the relevance of the curriculum to the needs of the ICT industry is interrogated with specific reference to re-energizing the national ICT economy for competitiveness and creation of employment. The curriculum design incorporates structured articulation between the Further Education and Training (FET) sector to the Higher Education sector and will attempt to address the “inverted pyramid crisis” within the South African education landscape [5].