The applicants, who have now grown impatient with the bursary scheme, have said that they are frustrated with the pending status of their applications. Their lack of patience with the scheme’s funding is further driven by their current open enrollment registrations whose funding is dependent on NSFAS approval.
One of the disgruntled students went on to say that despite having applied last year, his funding had only changed to “Provisionally Funded” and has remained that way ever since. Another pointed out that some students receive temporary registration status, only to be rejected for not being able to fund their registrations.
It affects us a lot because now we have to wait for other students to be registered and some other students are temporarily registered and declined at the end of the day.
Meanwhile, during his 2023 Nsfas State of Readiness speech on Wednesday, Higher Education Minister, Blade Nzimande confirmed that the 2023 Nsfas budget totals R47.6 billion, with R38.6 billion allocated for Universities and 8.9 billion for TVET Colleges.
Student movement leaders also called into question Nsfas's delays saying that they are placing students in a vulnerable position regarding their enrollment among other things. Meanwhile, at the same media briefing, Nsfas Board Chairperson, Ernest Khoza, went on to say that the bursary scheme received over 1.6 million student funding applications.
“Nsfas received more than one comma six million applications. This is the highest number received in the history of the scheme.” Khoza stated.
However, despite the confirmed increment in applications, the scheme has so far rejected approximately 160,000 of them and has so far received 1300 application appeals.
Nsfas has given those looking to appeal their rejected applications a closing deadline of Monday 20 February 2023.
