For the past few years, there has been a high number of tertiary students who have expressed their grievances regarding the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).
Majority of the complaints are regarding unpaid fees and delayed student allowances.
Recently, Nsfas announced that it has appointed four Fintech companies to assist in the disbursement of student allowances directly into relevant individuals bank accounts.
As this is a pilot project, three institutions in the university sector have been approached for the pilot - this includes the University of South Africa (Unisa) , Fort Hare and University of Limpopo.
The Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) College sector has not been left behind as they too have been engaged in processes to onboard students.
For the 2023 academic year and for TVET Colleges, the living allowance of R6000 per annum (distributed monthly) will be introduced for Nsfas-funded students in this sector to be accommodated within the TVET budget allocation.
The 40km radius control for TVET College students limiting access to accommodation allowance is removed, and a more equitable 10 km radius is introduced for both sectors.
In the 2023 Policy (Transitional Arrangement) Nsfas expressed its intention to centralise accreditation of private accommodation and it aims to enforce compliance to the Minimum Norms and Standards for Student Housing.
In 2022 it had been proposed that students pass 50% of their courses as per the course pass rate table introduced in the policy.
This was followed by Nsfas having consultations with key roleplayers in Higher Education to deduce the correct course credit progression rate to be implemented for university students in the 2023 academic year.
The 2023 academic eligibility criteria requirement for university students will be implemented as follows:
- First Time Entering must achieve 50%+1 of their registered credits to be funded by Nsfas in the following academic term.
- Continuing and Returning Students must achieve 55% of their registered course credits to be funded by Nsfas in the following academic term.
The government bursary scheme has predicted that it will see a 7% increase in the number of students funded, compared to the previous academic year and this increase "would be covered within the allocated budget.
This comes after the tertiary sector had been negatively impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in the Nsfas shortfall of R6.8 billion last year.
