On Monday morning, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) provided updates on NSFAS loan applications. NSFAS Administrator, Mr. Freeman Nomvalo, revealed that for the 2024 academic year, NSFAS received 24 000 applications for the Missing Middle Loan now being offered.
In 2024, NSFAS has re-introduced loans into it’s funding structure as a way to support missing middle students. These missing middle students won’t qualify for the NSFAS bursary due to having a household income over R350 000 per annum.
Nomvalo announced that the financial aid scheme has completed the assessments of eligibility. NSFAS intends to finalise processes with student loans and give further updates by no later than 15 June.
Nomvalo said that NSFAS is now finalising the list of 2024 NSFAS beneficiaries and those who submitted NSFAS appeals and were successful. NSFAS is currently reviewing their IT systems to improve turnaround times and integration into institutions.
Once a NSFAS loan application is submitted, the applicant might receive a 'provisionally funded' NSFAS status but what does this mean and what should the applicant do next?
What A 'Provisionally Funded' NSFAS Loan Status Means
The ‘Provisionally Funded’ status indicates that the student has, in fact, been approved for funding, but that NSFAS has a few processes they need to follow before confirming this funding. Therefore, when a student sees this, they should take note that this is a positive outcome and that they have been deemed as qualifying for funding.
Strategic Enablement Executive at NSFAS, Ms Vuyokazi Mafilika, explains:
If a student is provisionally funded, it means that they qualify based on the assessment that has already been done.
What's next?
NSFAS has said that there are two steps that need to take place before they can confirm NSFAS funding for the student.
Once NSFAS has received sufficient information, they will send the pre-agreement form for the NSFAS loan. The student will then have to sign this pre-agreement form and acknowledge the conditions attached to it.
After this, NSFAS would then proceed with the next step of obtaining full registration information from the institution. Once this is done, NSFAS will then generate a loan agreement form.
The student will then sign this loan agreement form, "and that’s where surety will be contained", says Mafilika. After this, the student has officially been funded.
