NSFAS Latest News Today 3rd February 2023
In todays latest NSFAS News – It has been verified that the National Student Financial Aid Scheme is no longer accepting applications for the 2023 school year, yet there is still a subset of hopeful applicants who have heard nothing about the status of their applications.
The candidates have expressed growing impatience with the bursary program as they await word on the status of their applications. Since the money for their present open enrollment registrations is contingent on NSFAS approval, they have little patience with the scheme’s funding process.
The student went on to complain that he had applied last year but that his funding status had simply changed to “Provisionally Funded” and had stayed that way ever since. Someone other brought up the fact that some students are granted provisional registration but ultimately denied full registration due to a lack of financial resources.
This has a significant impact on us since we must wait for other students to be registered, and because some students are provisionally accepted only to be dropped later.
Meanwhile, Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande announced the R47.6 billion 2023 Nsfas budget, with R38.6 billion earmarked for Universities and R8.9 billion allocated for TVET Colleges, during his 2023 Nsfas State of Readiness speech on Wednesday.
Leaders of the student movement have voiced concerns over Nsfas’ delays, claiming that their actions put students at risk in a variety of ways. At the same press conference, Nsfas Board Chair Ernest Khoza reported that over 1.6 million students had applied for financing through the organization’s bursary program.
More than one million, six hundred thousand applications were submitted to NSFAS. The amount of applications is unprecedented for this program. As Khoza put it:
Despite the acknowledged increase in applications, the plan has thus far rejected around 160,000 of them and received 1300 appeals of rejected applications.
Those who choose to challenge Nsfas’s denial of their applications have until Monday, February 20, 2023, to do so.
