In 2023, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) announced that they would start offering the NSFAS Missing Middle Loan as part of their Comprehensive Student Funding Model.
This NSFAS loan is for both undergraduate and postgraduate students and is geared towards students who don't qualify for NSFAS bursaries. Rejected NSFAS bursary applicants will automatically be re-assessed for eligibility under the missing middle loan scheme.
Once a NSFAS loan application is submitted, the applicant might receive a 'provisionally funded' NSFAS status but what does this mean and what should the applicant do next?
'Provisionally Funded' NSFAS Status Meaning
The ‘Provisionally Funded’ status indicates that the student has, in fact, been approved for funding, but that NSFAS has a few processes they need to follow before confirming this funding. Therefore, when a student sees this, they should take note that this is a positive outcome and that they have been deemed as qualifying for funding.
Strategic Enablement Executive at NSFAS, Ms Vuyokazi Mafilika, explains:
If a student is provisionally funded, it means that they qualify based on the assessment that has already been done.
What's next?
NSFAS has said that there are two steps that need to take place before they can confirm NSFAS funding for the student.
Once NSFAS has received sufficient information, they will send the pre-agreement form for the NSFAS loan. The student will then have to sign this pre-agreement form and acknowledge the conditions attached to it.
After this, NSFAS would then proceed with the next step of obtaining full registration information from the institution. Once this is done, NSFAS will then generate a loan agreement form.
The student will then sign this loan agreement form, "and that’s where surety will be contained", says Mafilika.
After this, the student has officially been funded.
If the students perform well, up to 50% of the student loan can be converted to a bursary.
NSFAS missing middle loans will have a particular emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) programmes, constituting 70% of beneficiaries. The remaining 30% will be allocated to Humanities and social science programmes.
