NSFAS CLARIFICATION ON ALLOWANCES FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND UNIVEN STUDENT PROTEST.
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) would like to clarify the matter regarding students who have been approved for funding for the 2017 academic year at various universities. In light of the prevailing student protests at the University of Venda, we would like to confirm the following:
As far as university students are concerned, NSFAS has so far approved 49 461 students at five of the 26 universities. The five universities are:
- Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
- Sol Plaatjie University
- University of South Africa
- University of Venda
- Durban University of Technology
Students at the other 21 universities receive their allowances directly from their respective institutions, and not from NSFAS. In ensuring that students receive allowances at these universities, NSFAS paid each university 15% of their respective allocations upfront on 16 January 2017, to pay for registration fees and student allowances. On 20 February 2017, the NSFAS Acting Executive Officer – Mr Lerato Nage – wrote to all universities requesting reconciliations of how the funds were utilised in a quest to ensure that students had received their allowances.
The University of Venda has 6 443 NSFAS funded students, but the university has only been able to send registration confirmations of only 3 891 of these students to NSFAS in order for NSFAS to activate the students’ Loan Agreement Forms (LAFs) for the student allowances to be activated. Of these students (3 891), 3 456 have signed their LAFs and 2 754 have received their allowances as of 30 March 2017.
With regard to the rest of students at all universities, the current overview update as of 30 March 2017 is that NSFAS has approved 201 766 students for funding. Of these, 152 305 students should receive their allowances at universities when they qualify. Universities have so far sent us registration confirmations of 79 955 in total. We have generated LAFs for 69 413 of these students so far and 44 608 of them have signed the LAFs. NSFAS needs registration confirmations from universities for us to release LAFs, because students should only sign their LAFs once they commence their studies.
We have disbursed sBux allowances to 23 253 students out of a population of 49 461 students studying at universities were NSFAS administers sBux. These numbers should not be treated as final figures. They are a status update as of today and will change as we receive more registrations from universities and disburse more LAFs from our side.
In conclusion, NSFAS has noted that the delays in generating Loan Agreement Forms for university students and Schedules of Particulars (SOPs) for TVET College students, were due to the fact that institutions were struggling to use the upgraded modules on their business management systems due to lack of proper training. We therefore provided professional training intervention to colleges on the 09th; 22nd; 30th; and 31st of March 2017.
Issued by
Kagisho Mamabolo, NSFAS Spokesperson
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