The National Student Financial Aid Scheme says it is working with Universities South Africa and all the institutions of higher education including Rhodes University in confirming the funding applications of all approved NSFAS students.
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme says it is working with Universities South Africa and all the institutions of higher education including Rhodes University in confirming the funding applications of all approved NSFAS students.
This was in reply to questions from Grocott’s Mail following last weekend, when Rhodes University had to find emergency accommodation for 48 students.
At the University’s Eden Grove building Saturday afternoon, where over two days 1 100 students had registered to study in 2017, subwardens from the Oppidan Hall Committee were scouring accommodation databases to find places for the 48 students who had registered, but had nowhere to stay.
Speaking to Grocott’s Mail about the crisis, registrar Stephen Fourie said every year there were students who registered but didn’t have accommodation. “But never to this extent.” The problem, Fourie said, stemmed from late last year, when the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) centralised the funding application and allocation process.
“Rhodes used to receive around R20 million a year, and funding decisions were part of our application process,” Fourie said.
In other words, if we admitted a student to Rhodes, we would be able to tell them at the same time whether they had been accepted to residence, and whether they had been approved for financial aid. “Now, students apply directly to the NSFAS head office in Cape Town. They make the funding decisions and are supposed to notify students. But they’ve failed.”
Crucial processes to match student applications to available places in residence at a particular institution were missing, among other things.
Fourie explained that the DHET had been involved in creating some solutions. However, when it came to first-year registrations, there was “the perfect storm”.
The minimum initial payment (MIP) had been done away with, and instead there was a registration fee of 10% “The so-called missing middle students (those whose families have an annual income of less than R600 000) were not required to pay a registration fee. And NSFAS students are not required to pay a registration fee. At a residential university such as Rhodes, you cannot separate the funding process from the registration process,” Fourie said.
In what the Scheme described as a student centred system, students were told to register themselves on a new web portal and set up their own ‘My NSFAS’ account.
The process from there was to have been that they apply online, have their applications assessed, and are informed by SMS whether their application is successful and the funding granted.
In December, ENCA reported that CEO Msulwa Daca said (http://www.enca.com/south-africa/nsfas-extends-applications-for-funding) with 4 000 to 5 000 users at a time, the portal had been overloaded.
On Saturday afternoon Fourie addressed 36 students and their anxious parents in the Eden Grove Red lecture theatre, explaining to them how the accommodation crisis had arisen, and what the University was doing to resolve it.
“We’re very sorry that you find yourselves in this situation, in most cases through no fault of your own,” Fourie said.
NSFAS spokesperson Kagisho Mamabolo said in reply to questions from Grocott’s Mail that they agreed with universities that while the allocation of grants to new students was a priority, the management of returning students must be coordinated to ensure that universities can immediately accept and register NSFAS returning students if they meet the following criteria:
• Received NSFAS financial aid in 2016;
• Satisfied the 50% module pass requirement for the 2016 academic year;
• Satisfy the N+2 completion requirement; and
• Signed their 2016 NSFAS agreement forms.
Mamabolo said NSFAS had received more than 168 644 unique applications through both the online and manual capture platform. A total of 136 236 applications were received through the online platform with only 32 428 captured manually.
More than 100 NSFAS employees had been prioritised to handling all applications.
More than 50 000 applications had been processed by end of November/beginning of December 2016. By 8 February 2017, NSFAS had already processed applications and responded to more than 175 348 This includes 67 875 first-entering students and 107 474 returning students. We therefore expect these numbers of funded students to increase.
Mamabolo could not confirm how many applications remained to be confirmed.
“We are still reconciling our figures.”
According to Fourie, 424 of Rhodes University first years are NSFAS funded – “about 30% up on previous years”.
As of Tuesday 14 February,
1 419 first years had registered – 18 fewer than that time the previous year. However, overall numbers (including returners and postgraduate) were on a par with last year.
Rhodes University’s first year residence accommodation crisis was resolved by Monday.
According to Student Bureau Manager Desiree Wicks, all female students previously given emergency accommodation had been allocated accommodation, as well as a few more.
Thirty three male students were allocated to emergency accommodation on Saturday and by Monday, 15 of those had been given permanent allocations.
3 573 is the total number of students who can currently be accommodated in Rhodes University residences, Wicks said.
