The combined household income threshold for prospective students who wish to apply for bursaries for post-matric studies in public institutions remains just below R350,000 a year.
But if the applicant is a person with a disability, the combined household income threshold is raised to R600,000 a year.
Higher education, science and innovation minister Blade Nzimande said this on Tuesday as he announced that the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) 2023 application season will open on Wednesday.
“As opposed to the previous year, the scheme resolved to open the application cycle early to give prospective applicants enough time to submit their applications and supporting documents,” Nzimande said.
Nzimande said for the 2022 academic year, NSFAS was allocated a budget of R43bn towards the beneficiaries’ tuition fees, food, travelling allowances and study materials.
Nzimande said NSFAS received 985,672 applications and 140,636 applicants were unsuccessful.
He said the majority of unsuccessful applicants failed to provide sufficient evidence to support their application for funding, exceeded the financial eligibility threshold, or had already achieved the highest level of qualification that NSFAS funds.
“Of these received applications, 739,526 applications were provisionally funded pending registration from their respective institutions.”
Nzimande said there were now 708,147 students who are being funded by NSFAS across the 26 public universities and 50 Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges.
Nzimande said the challenge the department is facing is that education institutions open in late January or early February, but the government’s financial year begins on April 1.
He said when these institutions open, they do not have money but students have to be admitted.
“We are also working with the National Treasury to ensure that we align the post-school education and training (PSET) calendar with the government funding calendar to ensure that NSFAS has reserve funds before the PSET institutions reopen,” Nzimande said.
Nzimande said with each impending application season, NSFAS was always looking at ways to improve its application system and process to simplify it for prospective applicants.
“This includes looking at ways to reduce time spent in a single application, the number of documents needed, the evaluation process and, ultimately, the funding decision.”
He said the NSFAS online application portal was redesigned to be more user-friendly and closer to other platforms that prospective applicants are accustomed to, such as WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
“The application process itself has been simplified and the questions asked are easier to understand.”
TimesLIVE
