The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) offers funding to disadvantaged South African students who are pursuing their studies at public tertiary institutions around the country.
Students must meet certain requirements in order to qualify for the bursary and one of these is that students must be from households that earn less than R350 000 annually, this is part of NSFAS means test.
The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has found that more than 40 000 students who were funded by NSFAS between 2018 and 2021, were from households that earn more than R350 000 which means that they did not meet the requirements to be funded by the bursary scheme. This cost NSFAS an estimated R5 billion.
The SIU said that students did not submit their parents' details when completing their application and therefore the means test was not properly conducted.
Students who are beneficiaries of social grant from the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) automatically meet the NSFAS criteria however this also causes issues as the irregularities in the Sassa system is immediately transferred over to the NSFAS system.
After interviewing students, the SIU said that some students admitted that they did not qualify to receive NSFAS funding.
The Director General of Higher Education and Training, Dr Nkosinathi Sishi said that there are a few issues that need to be addressed regarding tertiary funding.
He said that the amount of money available to fund students falls far short of the demand and there are significant gaps between funding and the full cost of studying.
Dr Sishi said that the NSFAS eligibility criteria excludes class issues such as the missing middle, who are students identified to be too rich to qualify for NSFAS funding and too poor to afford the cost of studying at a tertiary institution.
He believes that if these issues can be confronted then the tertiary sector can transition into a new era where no youth is sitting outside of the system.
Currently there are 2.5 million young South Africans in education and he said this is not enough as 3.4 million are sitting outside of the system. Sishi hopes to see the registration of all younf people at Post Secondary Education and Training institutions within the next 6 months.
