In recent years, a number of public university and Technical Vocational Education and Training college students complained about the technical glitches that they encountered when submitting their online funding application.
In 2022, Higher Education Minister Dr. Blade Nzimande announced that the National Student Financial Aid Scheme’s (NSFAS) application system would receive a few but yet significant changes that would make it become more user-friendly.
In an interview, NSFAS CEO, Andile Nongongo has admitted that the Scheme’s application’s tracker needs to be improved, as there had been some issues with it.
Some of these issues include the tracker being too broad, resulting in some students being confused as to why they were stuck in a stage for so long because the particular stage has so many steps.
Some students have encountered being stuck on provisionally funded, and institutions pointed out that they are not funded.
It is for this reason that Nongongo has also explained that this means that the student is funded, however, NSFAS is waiting for the student's registration information.
In the case of students whose application has been stuck on stage 2 for the past few months, then this indicates that the student's application is awaiting evaluation.
On this stage, students are asked to submit supporting documents, should they not do so, unfortunately NSFAS can’t move them forward in the process.
Why are some students still stuck on the appeal stage?
Some students are stuck on this stage because they are submitting random photographs and documents rather than the required documents, just so they can pass that stage.
Another reason for this includes NSFAS looking at 24/7 access to queries and getting more people to respond.
The Independent Appeals Tribunal is currently working on appeals, and it has issued 20,000 responses to students who are affected by academic progression.
Although NSFAS students' appeals were meant to be concluded sooner, the timeline has been slightly moved to the end of April 2023.
