Bachelor of Housing Development Honours

Purpose

The Bachelor of Housing Development Honours aims to produce qualifying learners who are equipped with theoretical knowledge and technical skills in the field of housing. This will enable the qualifying learner to address housing-related challenges which are raised in the National Development Plan (NDP) and 2020 vision document. The qualification, therefore, focuses on enabling learners to develop a critical understanding of housing theory, policy and finance, residential layout and sub-division, housing implementation, project management and research. Furthermore, the qualification aims to produce qualifying learners with good research skills. These will be useful in practice and the qualifying learners will be well prepared to further their studies at the master's level. These skills and competencies will allow qualifying learners to occupy positions as policy implementing agencies and analysts, project managers, property financiers, community development practitioners, and settlement planners.

Rationale

The need for housing practitioners to help address the myriad of developmental challenges in South Africa has been well established. Despite the provision of more than 4.3 million RDP houses between 1994 and 2014, the backlog remains high at 2.3 million and about 14% of the population live in informal dwellings (Africacheck.org, 2014). Service delivery protests attest to community dissatisfaction with the provision of services, and it is estimated that there are four times more protests over housing than any other services (Msindo, undated). The qualification is designed to be focused on the development agenda of South Africa, within the broader context of the Global South.

In this regard, socio-economic redress and spatial transformation are strong underpinning values that define the ethos of the qualification in this broader context. The NDP 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals are key drivers of the curriculum. The qualification meets the sector-specific needs because it will produce housing practitioners who have a sound understanding of housing policy, a holistic perspective of housing issues including social, economic, environmental, cultural, and institutional perspectives and skills in project management and evaluation are well placed to address the housing challenges of the country.

The Bachelor of Housing Honours aims to produce qualifications with specialised knowledge in housing and well-developed critical thinking and problem-solving skills. While the focus is on preparing learners for the South African job market, the qualification also draws on international best practices and thus prepares learners for practice in the human settlement field globally. The qualification will also prepare learners for study at Master's level. This is achieved by the inclusion of a research methodology module and a research project.

Learners will benefit by acquiring critical knowledge and skills towards a housing qualification that meets all the disciplinary competencies while engaging within a transdisciplinary curriculum paradigm that situates learning within a broader socio-economic context. The benefit of this is that knowledge and skills can be transferred for the spatial transformation of communities in the developing context, especially the historically disadvantaged communities in South Africa. Another vital benefit to communities is that the qualification draws on alternative learning pathways such as RPL, whereby persons who could not have accessed higher education due to their socio-economic circumstances, may be able to advance their professional skills sets and their livelihoods. This will have a consequential effect on the general social and economic upliftment of the built environment through critical knowledge transfer within their own communities.

The qualification will serve to widen access for previously disadvantaged learners. Learning pathways are therefore two-fold, including both formal learning and the recognition of prior learning. Qualifying learners will be able to work in public, private, Non-Government Organisation (NGO) sectors as Housing Practitioners in various fields such as Project Managers, Directors, Managers, Heads of Departments, Implementing Agents, Real Estates Agents, and Property Developers and even start their own businesses.