Since its establishment in 1999, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has been providing financial assistance to students pursuing tertiary education. Today the scheme funds more than one million students enrolled at universities and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges across South Africa.
NSFAS has announced the opening of bursary applications for the 2024 academic year in November 2023. With concerns raised about the late start of the application period, the scheme said a November start to the application period was done to streamline decision-making with updated South African Revenue Service (SARS) information.
Cabinet was briefed on several measures aimed at avoiding challenges faced by NSFAS-funded students in 2023. NSFAS say improvements in data exchange processes and direct payment systems have been made to enhance efficiency.
Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said that Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande will also provide details on measures to enhance NSFAS’ performance.
In the meantime, the minister called on students to begin applying for NSFAS funding and warned students against waiting until the last day.
NSFAS Concerns
Challenges from 2023, such as outstanding and late payment of allowances as well as unresolved appeals remain a concern for stakeholders in the sector including for Universities South Africa (USAf).
Student leaders marched to parliament to reject the implementation of the NSFAS direct payment system. They also raised their concerns on other issues including the NSFAS accommodation cap, bank charges for the NSFAS bank account, the 60 credit policy and delayed NSFAS appeal decisions.
Despite the 2023 academic year approaching, NSFAS was still processing appeal applications. It was further revealed that thousands of students were wrongly defunded by NSFAS, prompting the scheme to reinstate their funding later in the year.
This was extremely stressful as students had no access to allowances as awaited the outcome of their appeal applications. This put them at risk of hunger and even homelessness as they could not afford the cost of accommodation.
USAf added that the NSFAS Accommodation cap led to student debt in 2023 which is set to have an impact on 2024 registrations. This as some institutions require students to settle debt before they are allowed to register for the academic year.
Concerns were also raised about the capacity of NSFAS to manage student accommodation allocations directly. NSFAS launched the student accommodation portal which allows accommodation providers to register their properties for consideration for NSFAS students.
Once signed in, accommodation providers will be able to list their properties by providing their property names, locations and images. NSFAS will then contact them and send a panel of experts to accredit and grade the properties to ensure that they are suitable for student living. OUTA nticipates that thousands of students will not have accommodation at the beginning of the 2024 academic year.
Budgetary projections also indicate a shortfall of R1.1 billion in the current financial period, with a potential R5.5 billion deficit in 2024/25 due to a 10% reduction in university funding.
NSFAS raised a concern regarding the 10% reduction in university funding and indicated that this will result in 87,712 students being left unfunded in the 2024 academic period and increasing to 120,976 students in the 2025 academic period.
Monthly payments for allowances will begin in February, with appeals from the 2023 academic year posing challenges due to a funding shortfall. Strategies to address appeal processing and budgetary concerns are urged for the sustainable functioning of NSFAS.
