The Minister of Higher Education, Buti Manamela has stated that the financial aid scheme is facing an estimated R15 billion student-funding gap across universities and TVET colleges.
Manamela briefed the Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Higher Education on Wednesday, 12 August on the progress in stabilising NSFAS, which still remains under administration.
He said NSFAS does not have enough money to fund all qualifying students, as it faces a student funding shortfall and that universities account for the overwhelming majority of the requirement.
According to Manamela, the problem runs deeper than money being overspent.
He said a report has indicated that there is what he described as a ‘structural mismatch’ between the number of qualifying students requiring support, the baseline allocation and the disappearance of once-off funding sources supported in previous years.
This, he said, does not “absolve NSFAS of the obligation to control expenditure, verify liabilities and operate within the law.”
“The immediate second-semester funding requirement must therefore be dealt with separately from the broader structural shortfall.
“Qualifying students cannot simply be abandoned because a long-term funding problem remains unresolved; but neither can government resolve a structural problem through repeated emergency interventions,” he said.
Manamela confirmed that he had received the Administrator’s Initial Stabilisation Plan. He said the plan outlines correct systemic problems including weakness in governance, financial controls, accommodations well as appeals and provides a useful strategic framework.
Despite the submission of the Plan, Manamela cautioned that it does not mean that stabilisation at NSFAS has been achieved
“The Department’s preliminary assessment is that the Plan remains stronger at the level of strategic commitment than at the implementation level. It still requires clearer quantitative baselines, costed interventions, measurable milestones and stronger evidence against which progress can be assessed.”
