The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is set to provide comprehensive funding to more than one million students in 2024. While many of these students know how the scheme’s funding works, thousands will receive NSFAS funding for the first time in 2024.
NSFAS provides comprehensive bursaries to poor and working-class students which enable them to pursue a higher education qualification. These qualifications must be offered at an approved public university or Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college.
The comprehensive funding by NSFAS includes money for fees along with several allowances. These allowances encompass transport expenses, living costs, expenses for learning materials, and accommodation costs.
Do NSFAS Students Pay Registration Fees?
No, students funded by NSFAS are not required to pay registration fees out of their own pocket. This is because NSFAS pays registration fees on behalf of students.
However, it's important that NSFAS only confirms funding for a student once they have registered for an approved course at a university of TVET college. This often causes confusion for students who do not have money to register.
Universities must allow students who are recipients of NSFAS bursaries to register without paying a registration fee, if they have been confirmed as provisionally funded, as this will be paid as part of their full tuition fee.
Earlier this year Minister Nzimande called on institutions not to deny students the opportunity to register due to unpaid fees from NSFAS. This as the student risks missing out on crucial coursework during the commencement of the academic year.
I call upon NSFAS to work together with the affected institutions to ensure that they speedily resolve all these outstanding cases. Whilst this is being resolved, I urge institutions not to deny NSFAS-funded students with outstanding payments to register for the current cycle.
NSFAS confirmed that of the 20,000 outstanding allowances, 9128 allowances have been successfully resolved. The remaining eleven thousand 11,000 allowances are being prioritised and will be processed as part of the 2024 normal disbursement procedure.
In this statement on the 18th of January 2024, NSFAS reported on the number of the 2023 outstanding allowances following the thorough analysis of the data provided by institutions in order to finalise the payment of outstanding allowances for the 2023 academic year.
The financial aid scheme attributed the delayed payment of allowances to the delay in the submission of registration data by universities, saying, "NSFAS will continue to engage the affected institutions to promptly resolve these disbursements of the outstanding allowances".
