Opinion Piece

Since the end of apartheid, the economic challenges many black students face and the way it impacts their studies has been a key policy in our country higher education sector. Which is why Nsfas was introduced to try and solve this problem. The mission of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme is to provider of financial aid to students from poor and working-class families in a sustainable manner that promotes access to, and success in, higher and further education and training. Which Nsfas has done well in that department since 1999 when it was announced to replace sector education and training authorities (SETA), in assisting and helping students from disadvantaged background. Nsfas was a government loan to help students and then after graduating a person was obligated to repay the loan. Which was working well because people knew what they want to study to find employment and pay the study loan. Many black people benefited from that.

However the scheme has been experiencing some problems in recent months, as Minister Blade Nzimande explains “The announcement to say we are moving to a new scheme 14 days before it had to be implemented messed NSFAS big time, exposed the extent to which NSFAS didn’t have a system. It increased the number of NSFAS beneficiaries and what was worse with that decision, it ignored the work that was done by the Higher Commission and the transitional measures”. This follows after the academic year was delayed due to students protests for the release of funds. Later in that same month acting minister in the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, announced additional funding’s to NSFAS which will rise from R35bn in 2020 to R42.1bn, which was already more than the R32bn the year before that. From what the look of things the common thread tracing from 2019 onwards is that additional funds of 2-3 billion will be required each year.

The reason why I bring this up it seems like the student protest, the delay in registration allowance, tuition fees, book and living allowances did not happen because students were not reasonable it showed the lack of planning and thought they put on this idea. There has been no new policy put in place to carry the idea forward, and as a result student across various universities and colleges have been experiencing delay in their monthly allowance. At the end of May a student from KwaZulu Natal Tvet college died due to hunger and fatigue because her allowance was delayed by Nsfas, as a result she was evicted by her landlord and was homeless. To take things further in the same months of May, 40 students from midlands college were evicted by their landlords due to failure to pay rent. Students have been trying to call for help from government, but it looks things are not looking promising yet.

The life of a University student according to the Nsfas Bursary Scheme was supposed to be simple, focus on your academics and we are going to take of everything else. However our leader have failed to deliver that promise. Its almost common now to expect every now and then a student protest, and those protest if they become normalized could have massive impact on those students’ academics. We could see a huge drop of student graduate per year, dropout rate could increase, and unemployment could increase, and businesses in the country could surfer because of less skilled workers. We already have a high uneducated rate of people in the country due to past structures and policies, and unless we pay attention to this things could get worse for the next generation. Already this year there was delay in registration money for first years. The idea of free education could be slipping away if we are not careful!!!Maybe I am rushing things a bit by thinking that things should be smooth, but students are in a crisis, and this crisis is not good for any country.