Good news has arrived as the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) announces that they'll be opening their NSFAS applications for two weeks for 2021 funding. This is geared towards students who didn't apply for NSFAS this year but are eligible and need the funding.
These NSFAS bursary applications will be open for two weeks until 3 September 2021.
This is being done to lift the financial burden of student debt for deserving students.
NSFAS spokesperson, Kagisho Mamabolo, said:
At the heart of everything was the number of students who qualify for NSFAS but could not apply, for one reason or the other, so that's why the board made the decision to say, "these are NSFAS qualifying students, perhaps we need to relook at another opportunity for them".
How will the applications work?
Students are urged to submit their names to the Financial Aid Office at their respective University.
Universities will then need to compile a list of students that qualify for NSFAS but do not have any form of funding and have not been able to apply for funding.
Students who qualify for this round of funding should be submitted by the University which means that the student can't submit the application directly to NSFAS.
After the University submits this list, NSFAS will then open up the system for those students only.
Mambolo said, "There were a number of tipping problems emanating from the introduction of the student centred model in 2014 and also followed by the announcement of free education in 2017 so all these issues actually made the scheme to rethink itself".
NSFAS applications for 2022 will open after this window closes as applications usually open in September.
