Johnathan Paoli
NSFAS has received over 1 936 330 bursary applications of which 1 000 389 are provisionally funded, 395 265 are awaiting evaluations, 80 111 have been withdrawn by the student, 141 886 are in progress and 136 558 applications are on the not-started status as applicants only created profiles and did not submit applications.
NSFAS has rejected 124 918 applications and 1 258 appeals have been lodged thus far.
The student finance loan scheme received 22 954 loan applications (as of 16 February 2024), and the application closing date was also on the 15 of February 2024.
Of the 22 954 loan applications received, 139 are provisionally funded, 12 890 are awaiting evaluations, 841 have been withdrawn by the student, 30 are in progress and 8 345 applications are on the not-started status as applicants only created profiles and did not submit applications.
NSFAS has rejected 476 loan applications and only 5 appeals have been lodged so far
The NSFAS Board met over the weekend to consider various policy and operational matters relating to the commencement of the 2024 academic year.
Deployment of NSFAS servicing administrators
In a Statement NSFAS said it has deployed its Servicing Administrators to all institutions (TVET colleges and universities), to provide registration support-related to all NSFAS processes.
“The servicing team has been assisting institutions to conclude all NSFAS outstanding processes, including data preparation and uploading”.
“The team will also assist students who have been confirmed for funding with their enquiries. They will assist students to upload supporting documents, guide students in the appeals process and in the student accommodation processes” said the statement .
In term of in-front payment to institutions
NSFAS said it has advanced an upfront payment to both the universities and the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges.
“For universities, NSFAS disbursed R2.8 billion in January 2024. This disbursement does not include the calculation of the tranche payments, which NSFAS will disburse at the beginning of April 2024.
“This upfront payment covers one month of student accommodation and the book allowance. The book allowance is calculated at half of the total cost whilst the accommodation is calculated as one month of the accommodation cost” said NSFAS, in a statement.
“For TVET colleges, a total of R580,150,950.00 was paid to colleges as tuition upfront in January 2024. An additional R1 billion is earmarked for three (3) months’ worth of allowances to be paid based on registration from the January-march period”.
All these upfront payments are meant to enable institutions to register all NSFAS approved students for the academic year 2024.
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