The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is undergoing a significant overhaul to tackle issues in application processing, student accommodation, and ICT infrastructure, just ahead of the 2025 application period.
NSFAS provides comprehensive bursaries and student loans to deserving learners enrolled in approved courses at universities and TVET colleges. This includes money for tuition and registration fees as well as several allowances for food, accommodation and learning materials.
For the 2024 academic year, NSFAS received over 1.8 million applications, overwhelming its current capacity, according to a recent parliamentary briefing by the scheme's administrator.
Each staff member can process up to 180 applications daily. However, with nearly 1.9 million applications, it would take one staff member nearly 10,000 days to complete. This highlights the urgent need for more resources.
To address this, NSFAS plans to hire additional staff and streamline its systems. While system instability has been a past issue, NSFAS now claims to have stabilized its systems and is better equipped for this application cycle.
We’ve resolved the system issues and are prepared to process applications. With increased capacity and system upgrades, we expect to handle the workload
However, they acknowledged that additional staff alone won’t fully resolve the issue, citing past system failures as a hurdle.
Accommodation Student accommodation remains a critical challenge, with many students facing delayed payments and eviction threats.
Accommodation delays have been a long-standing problem, with payments sometimes held up for months or even years. NSFAS is focusing on automation and improving efficiency to tackle these delays, while also expanding its on-campus presence for better support.
To address the situation, NSFAS is working with universities, accommodation providers, and students to standardize lease agreements and streamline payment systems. A pilot project at select universities aims to gather feedback and refine the system.
NSFAS manages the accommodation function with fewer than 10 staff members, making automation essential. The agency believes regular process reviews will help achieve this goal.
Nomvalo also pointed out inefficiencies in NSFAS’s ICT spending, with issues stemming from poor system configurations and inexperienced teams, which have caused technical problems such as data looping.
NSFAS plans to invest in tech upgrades, including a chatbot to provide instant responses to student inquiries.
We’ve introduced a chatbot via WhatsApp for students to get immediate answers, provided the data is in the system
Despite these challenges, Nomvalo expressed confidence that NSFAS can improve its services and overcome operational obstacles.
