The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) could fund all successful NSFAS loan applicants in 2024. This comes after its administration confirmed how many students applied for loan funding from the government bursary scheme.
Up until 2023, NSFAS only provided comprehensive bursaries to deserving learners enrolled in approved courses at universities and TVET colleges. The funding included money for tuition and registration fees as several allowances for food, accommodation and learning materials.
However, in 2024, Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande launched the NSFAS missing middle loan scheme as part of the Comprehensive Funding Model in January, These loans are available to students who do not qualify for NSFAS bursaries but cannot afford the costs associated with higher education.
Missing middle students refer to individuals who come from households with a combined income exceeding the threshold set by NSFAS of R350,000 and don’t qualify for government-funded support. Despite exceeding the household income threshold, these students cannot afford the cost of higher education.
The minister revealed that NSFAS will offer 31,000 missing middle student loans in 2024.
Newly-appointed NSFAS administrator Freeman Nomvalo revealed that the scheme received 24,000 NSFAS student applications for the 2024 academic year.
This indicates that NSFAS has enough funds to provide comprehensive student loans to all successful applicants in 2024.
We have received about 24 000 Loan Scheme applications and we have already completed the financial eligibility assessment for all the applicants.
When Will Students Receive NSFAS Loan Decisions
Nomvalo confirmed that the scheme is currently working to finalise all funding decisions for students who applied for the NSFAS loan. They anticipate that these funding decisions will be delivered to students by 15 June 2024.
We intend to communicate with the successful applicants no later than the 15th of June 2024.
The administration confirmed that one of the main reasons he was appointed by Minister Nzimande was to get the NSFAS loan scheme off the ground. This includes finalising the funding conditions for the NSFAS loan.
To ensure the effectiveness in terms of the finalisation of funding guidelines of the loan scheme for the Missing Middle
Nomvalo added that NSFAS is currently working to increase its capacity to implement the loan scheme for the foreseeable future.
We are also in the final planning phase for the appointment of specialised capacity to finalise the implementation of the loan scheme for 2024 and beyond.
