Cape Town — The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is the reason why so many academic hopefuls are unable to pursue their dreams due to financial troubles.
NSFAS is meant to provide financial aid to students from socio-economic backgrounds but has faced troubles lately as it has failed to pay outstanding student allowances, meaning students are unable to register for the 2024 academic year.
According to the University of South Africa (UNISA) SRC president, Nkosinathi Mabilane, NSFAS is a system students wanted but currently faces administration issues, The Citizen reported
“It’s the best in the world, but the challenge is based on the administration of the institution and how the government rolls out the policies and schemes. If a scheme can fund 1.1 million students, it tells you it can roll out free education. But the challenge is the political will and the lack of proper administration from the sector,” he said.
Mabilane added that the minister and the department of higher education have failed failed students.
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“These students registered and NSFAS paid. But because of its own challenges, it released some of the students who were not eligible for the funding and withdrew funding. At Unisa alone, we have about 33 000 students who were defunded by NSFAS early last year.”
Mabilane said students were calling for the eradication of third-party companies (Coinvest) as distributors of allowances to students as this system failed students with late payments and to an extent, non-payments.
NSFAS has faced its share of troubles in recent weeks for failing to meet it’s self-imposed deadline of 15 January to pay back 20 000 outstanding student loans. Their failure to do so has put pressure on them to pay late registration fees by 32 March 2024.
NSFAS has blamed the universities for their tardiness in filing registration data, saying they would engage with universities for a speedy resolution.
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
