NSFAS will keep their N+1 and N+2 rule in place. This comes after many students complained and were shouting for the rule to be terminated. With this announcement, the Minister said that they will be making changes to the way they assess students whose funding is affected by this rule.
Nzimande has said that in 2020, the application of this rule has been more efficient. In a briefing today, he said that the department found that the way the rule was applied before incorrect or done "in an unjust manner", the Minister said. They were neglecting to evaluate whether:
- Reasons behind students de-registering in the first semester in prior years of study
- Students were academic progress was affected by other factors, eg. psychosocial factors
- Students who exceeded the rule based on the time on their system but are currently in their final year
NSFAS has about 9000 student appeals which are related to the application of the N+ rule and these will be considered by evaluating whether the application was done in an unjust manner, and if it was they will be funded, said Nzimande. These processes are currently underway.
With this new method, the Minister says "it won't be a blanket approach or a one size fits all".
In an earlier briefing, the Higher Education Minister posed the question, 'why would you want to fail?' in discussing the N+ rule and saying that this rule makes way for failure. It was found that students were staying at institutions longer than they were supposed to.
NSFAS changed the N+2 rule to the N+1 rule when they changed their loan to a bursary in 2018. This sees them fund students one year more than the specified time of their qualification, should the student have started funding with NSFAS prior to 2018.
