The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas) has the aim of providing free education to future students coming from poor and working class backgrounds. However, calls for the scheme to make the Nsfas bursary more accessible have been non-stop.
During the 55th National Conference of the African National Congress, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that Nsfas is a great achievement in government's goal to make education accessible.
In 2018, as a result of the Fees Must Fall movement which saw students protest for free education, Nsfas converted from a loan scheme to a bursary scheme. This lead to funding growing.
Funding by Nsfas for poor and working class students in universities and TVET colleges rose from R21 billion in 2018 to R38.6 billion in 2021, according to Ramaphosa.
This equated to the amount of students receiving Nsfas funding going from 580 000 to 770 000 over the same period.
The expansion of access to higher education is a great achievement that will benefit the economy and the country for many years to come.
Fasiha Hassan, who was a student leader during the Fees Must Fall movement and became the youngest Member of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature, says that government should do more.
"Higher education is chronically underfunded so we welcome the increase in funding and we welcome the fact that there are more and more young people who are benefitting from Nsfas but it really is also a drop in the ocean, given what needs to happen with young people and youth development in this country."
Hassan says there is still a need for us to structurally change higher education and that this needs to happen beyond just funding, "it needs to also look at student success".
The reality for some students is that what is included in their Nsfas bursary is not enough. Many students, because they come from poor backgrounds, use their Nsfas allowances to send money back home and are then left with nothing.
Now, when we look at these numbers, we can't look at them in isolation to the people and that's something that we really need to focus on so we welcome the increase but we still need to continue to fight so that more and more young people have access to the system but don't have to fight to have their space in it. It should be automatic.
"Education is a right, it's not a privilege," says Hassan.
Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande has said that R80 billion has been set aside by the government for the next three years to ensure deserving students can access tertiary education. As for the 2022/23 financial year, Nsfas will be allocated a R49 billion budget.
