Bursaries from the Ikusasa Student Financial Aid Scheme (ISFAP) not only cater towards missing middle students but also provides wrap-around support, taking care of more than just fees. 2024 bursary applications are now open.
Careers Portal, your trusty one stop shop for finding learnerships, internships and bursaries as well as any information you would need about studying and your future career, recently sat down with ISFAP to discuss 2024 applications and answer some burning questions about the bursary.
How can I apply and when do ISFAP bursary applications for 2024 close?
Applications on 1 June and are only accepted online. Should a student be interested in applying for an ISFAP bursary, they need to head to the ISFAP application page.
Applicants are urged to check that the documents required are attached and are certified and to at the date it was certified because ISFAP needs a recently certified document. ISFAP also encourages applicants to ensure that IS numbers are entered correctly.
This application cycle will close on the last day of October, as it does every year. This means that those interested in the ISFAP bursary have a couple of months to submit the applications, five to be exact.
Once you start your ISFAP application, you will be able to exit and come back anytime and not lose your progress. This comes in handy if you have connectivity issues or need to certify something.
ISFAP's Regional Programme Manager, Sifanele Biyela, explained that this also helps them avoid a duplication of applications from students.
What does the bursary cover?
On the academic side, ISFAP funds full tuition, accommodation, which if it's at a university it''s fully paid and private accommodation is subject to a cap. They also provide meal allowances, cash allowances and laptops.
ISFAP prides them selves in not only looking after the academic needs of students but also ensuring that they're supported psychosocially. This means that students receive the following support:
- Mental health support
- A dedicated programme manager at their university that's there for them to speak to if they have an issue
- Tutor support for if they need a tutor for a particular subject
- Life skills, in terms of time management, financial literacy programmes
We try by all means to cover all the basics so that all they have to do is to study and pass. They are fully supported and we are not just looking at one aspect of their studies.
To ensure that they produce as many graduates as possible, they aim to ensure that the environment that they are placing students in only requires them to just focus on their studies and not have the weight of other things on them. This is what lead ISFAP to place a lot of importance on the mental health support and the availability of counsellors and psychologists because the reality is that students will have issues which are not related to studies.
"We try to cushion the fall and say there is support. We can try and walk this path with you. So it's a very balanced programme in terms of the support that we offer to the students," says Biyela.
How does ISFAP choose who to fund?
ISFAP is a non-profit organisation that funds missing middle students and how they determine missing middle students is to look at households that have an income of between R350 000 per annum to R600 000 per annum.
These are the families that are considered to not be poor enough for NSFAS but they in reality cannot afford tertiary education, that's out of pocket. So that's where ISFAP comes in.
ISFAP funds first-time university registrants, so it has to be the applicant's first time at a tertiary institution and they must be registered for an undergraduate degree.
Whether students are funded also depends on whether or not they have applied for a programme that ISFAP currently funds at an institution that they are currently available at.
To find out more about the courses and universities ISFAP covers, head to The Careers Portal.
In terms of academic requirements, ISFAP looks at matric results, as they require a 65% average. They then sort students in terms of performance, from highest to lowest.
Will ISFAP ever cover more universities and courses?
To explain this, Sifanele says, "So the topic of courses compared to institutions is different because courses are dynamic, they're gonna change".
ISFAP focusses on the occupations in high demand as well as advancements in technology. They constantly have courses that change.
ISFAP is also driven by funding requirements which leads courses to change every year.
As for institutions, Sifanele says this need more sustainable funding as well as building and sustaining those relationships with institutions.
So we definitely would like to expand but at the moment, we have no plans in the short-term to expand into other institutions. We need to be realistic in terms of what is sustainable at the moment and what's affordable at the moment and expansion in the short-term is not what we foresee, at the moment.
Can students have an ISFAP bursary and another bursary at the same time?
Biyela says they are very strict about this and that it is not allowed. Should students be found to be double-dipping, they withdraw the bursary immediately.
"It's considered double-dipping and essentially, you are absorbing an opportunity that would've covered two students and you are keeping it as your own," she explains.
How many bursaries are offered every year?
ISFAP does not have a set amount or cap when it comes to how many bursaries are available every year. Instead, it depends on how much funding is available. ISFAP is majority privately funded as well as receiving some funding from a few SETAs.
"So in the 5 months window of applications, everyone applies, whoever is valid is processed and then, depending on the commitments we then get from our funders for the year, that's what drives the amount of students that we can take."
It's unfortunate that it ISFAP is not able to cater to all those who applied with Biyela saying, "the gap is really still that big in terms of the needs of the missing middle students".
ISFAP has a fundraising department who reach out to funders on behalf of our students. They approach private entities and ask for funding saying they have a programme to help students who need support.
The risk is cushioned by us being there as ISFAP to ensure that you get value for your money and you ensure that you contribute to the economy by ensuring that we produce well-rounded professionals at the end of their studies.
Unfortuntely, applications don't speak to their allocations and ISFAP's main goal this year is to get more funders so that more students can be supported.
ISFAP has started high school drives where they visit high schools to speak to students from grade 10 to 12 to create awareness of professions that are available to them, what universities require in terms of applications and then what they then offer as ISFAP.