Free funding applies for only first time students says Nsfas
"NSFAS graduates and dropouts must repay their debt."
THE National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas) says free funding for higher education will only be given to first time undergraduate students.
According to the CEO of the scheme, Steven Zwane, around 300 000 applications for funding were received for the 2018 academic year and 50 thousands SMS have been sent to new students since 18 January this year. The rest will be sent this week.
“Universities and TVETs have done the pre-screening, for example, do they meet the R350 000 threshold we’ve set up. Are they on Sassa grants, if they are then the information gets shared with us. We are looking forward to evaluating the applications coming from the central clearing house. Those are the students that may not have applied to institutions and did not apply to NSFAS, but an opportunity is there for them. The delays were caused by the verification process to prevent fraud,” said Zwane.
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Zwane further pleaded with NSFAS graduates and dropouts to repay their debt, which currently stands at R29.8bn, as it may affect future funding.
“Debt collection has helped us pay upfront to institutions to go into 50/50 partnerships with NGOs. If we don’t get this money we will struggle to make upfront payments to institutions, we can’t continue to fund students through NGO organisations,” he said.
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