Nsfas News

South Africa is facing a growing demand to access higher education. The Department of Higher Education has indicated that they expect their NSFAS budget allocation to increase over the next few years.

Every year, different departments present their budgets to Parliament and a Budget Vote is taken. This year, during the Department of Higher Education's Budget Vote, Minister of the Department, Blade Nzimande, spoke on what the plans are for student funding.

Thousands of households in South Africa cannot afford to absorb the cost of tertiary education for a student. The National Student Financial Aid Scheme aims to ensure that students from these households can pursue their tertiary education goals. However, some students who qualify for funding have been rejected from receiving the comprehensive bursary.

Messages circulating on social media have claimed that the National Student Financial Aid Scheme opened bursary applications for the next academic year. This left many prospective applicants gathering the required documents to apply for funding.

Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college students have just a few hours left to apply for a bursary from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme. Trimester 2 applications will close on Monday.

NSFAS funded students are due to receive their allowance payments soon, but the bursary scheme requires all beneficiaries to follow their specified registration process. Allowance disbursements will be carried out differently for certain students.

Student funding by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme serves as a crucial lifeline for students who can't afford tertiary education. Luckily, the application window is still open for TVET college students, leaving them with a limited amount of time to apply.   

While free higher education is a hope many students have, there have been a number of setbacks in seeing that idea become a reality, especially surrounding the group of missing middle students.

As of the 2023 academic year, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) established a new payment method for its bursary recipients to access their monthly allowances. The Scheme first piloted this in public Technical and Vocational Education and Training.

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme has established a payment method students will use to access their monthly allowances as of the 2023 academic year and university students have been advised to open their bank account to conveniently receive their monthly allowances.

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme funds students who are pursuing their studies in any of South Africa’s public universities and Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Colleges.

NSFAS funding applications for funding for the 2023 academic year opened on 28 September 2022 and closed on 31 January 2023. The Scheme has opened another application cycle for Trimester Courses in some public institutions of higher learning.

Personal information can be used by unscrupulous individuals to commit fraud and other crimes. Students who benefit from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme have been given some tips to ensure their personal information does not fall into the hands of unscrupulous individuals. 

After the recent discovery of R5 million in wrongfully allocated NSFAS funds, one of South Africa's public universities has returned just over R300 million to the bursary scheme. The investigation into NSFAS kicked off last year and is still ongoing.

Allowance payment delays have been a long-standing challenge that has hung over NSFAS's funding model. The scheme's CEO recently outlined the reasons for adopting a more direct payment model.
 

The investigation into NSFAS continues, now with the South African Union of Students joining the conversation. Around 40,000 students are suspected of receiving NSFAS funds they do not qualify for.

The Special Investigating Unit revealed that more than R5 Billion National Student Financial Aid Scheme money was possibly allocated to students who did not qualify for funding. The Scheme has since worked towards addressing this challenge.

Over the past few weeks, the country’s largest state-funded bursary scheme, NSFAS has been in the spotlight over its past student funding allocations. However, the scheme’s top officials have also been quick to point out its impact in expanding access to further education for aspiring underprivileged students. 

Over the past few months, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme has made a number of changes. This, according to the scheme, has been done as a response to complaints of allowance payment delays that have affected funded students nationwide.