The Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) started undertaking national cohort studies, including a specific study on NSFAS-funded students during the 2016/17 financial year.
Cohort studies are studies of newly enrolled undergraduate students who the department's research tracked for ten years to determine the proportion of students who have discontinued their studies or who have completed them.
Any student who has ever received NSFAS funding was taken into account by the NSFAS cohort study. The nationwide undergraduate cohort for public higher education institutions from 2000 to 2019 was covered by the following report, which was released in February 2022 to reflect the following outcomes:
National Cohort Rates
- Dropout - 32.4%
- Throughput - 61.2%
The study also revealed that the following percentage of students who have at some point received financial aid do better than the national cohort.
- Dropout - 20.8%
- Through - 71.3 %
Higher Education Minister, Blade Nzimande further stated that a study is underway to provide information on 3-year and 4-year qualifications for the new bursary scheme cohort. The current study will be published in March 2023 and will include students in the new Bursary Scheme.
Information on 4 - year qualifications will be contained in the March 2024 undergraduate cohort study report. NSFAS has not conducted any research to date regarding the dropout rate of NSFAS beneficiaries.
In prior years, when a student was found not to be academically eligible for continued funding. For example, whether the student had passed enough subjects/courses/modules, the student was expected to continue studying at an institution as a self-funded student.
This applied to N + 2 University students and all TVET College students. However, the department also acknowledged that it is challenging to determine whether a student dropped out of their chosen institution or whether they continued as a self-funded student because of the false "drop-out" caused by these regulations.
Although the N+2-related policy is no longer applicable to NSFAS funding for university students beginning with the 2022 academic year, the policy statements related to TVET College students are still applicable, and as a result, any dropout rates developed by the institution would continue to be overstated.
As a result, the institutions anticipated being able to offer data on the dropout rate of NSFAS recipients who attended university as of the 2022 Academic.
