<\/p>\n
Cape Town – Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande has defended the embattled National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas), saying it was a success story since it was formed.<\/p>\n
\u201cNsfas has not failed. Nsfas is a success story of this ANC government since it was established,\u201d Nzimande said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe actually will be celebrating 30 years of Nsfas this year, and Nsfas is functioning optimally,\u201d Nzimande said during the oral question in the National Council of Provinces on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
He was reacting to DA MP Mbulelo Bara, who asked if it was not time to admit that the scheme failed administratively and that there was a need for a new student funding disbursement model to be explored.<\/p>\n
Bara noted that President Cyril Ramaphosa authorised a proclamation for the Special Investigating Unit to investigate a host of irregular expenditures, fruitless and wasteful expenditures, among other things.<\/p>\n
\u201cNsfas, in its current form, is failing dismally,\u201d Bara said.<\/p>\n
Nzimande said Nsfas ha had discussions with the SIU and that they welcomed the investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope that this investigation by the SIU will help prioritise those defrauding Nsfas. The fact that there are challenges does not deserve that Nsfas can be regarded as a failure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNsfas is supporting the children of the working class and the poor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He conceded that the bursary scheme has challenges, but it needed to update its system so that it quickly catches cheating students who misrepresented their financial status to obtain financial assistance.<\/p>\n
He charged that the fact that Nsfas identified students who were benefiting unduly from its funding was proof that it was functional.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Nzimande said the scheme identified more than 35 000 students who benefited unduly from the funds after Nsfas implemented internal controls and risk strategies.<\/p>\n
He also said he has ordered that the students who misrepresented their financial position be reported to law enforcement agencies so that further action can be taken against them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not going to just discontinue funding but also hand them over to law enforcement agencies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Asked whether criminal charges were levelled against 440 000 \u201cghost students\u201d identified in an audit by Auditor-General in 2019-20, the minister said the affected students were funded legitimately.<\/p>\n
He explained that their funding was not published in a government gazette, a move that was flagged as unauthorised expenditure by the Auditor-General.<\/p>\n
\u201cI dealt with that matter. That money did not go to ghost students. It was money that went to legitimate students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nzimande told the MPs that a study on Nsfas-funded first-time undergraduate students tracked over 10 years found in February that there was a 28% dropout rate in 2019 compared to the national dropout rate of 32.4%.<\/p>\n
\u201cNsfas students, on average, are performing better than non- Nsfas funded students.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also said his department provided funding to tertiary education institutions to improve pass rate and through-put rate.<\/p>\n
Nzimande said his department had not taken a decision that students that dropped out should pay back the percentage of funding they received from Nsfas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are, however, at the moment, undertaking through the Ministerial Task Team an extensive development of a comprehensive student funding model, which would require policy changes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cape Times<\/strong><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cape Town – Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande has defended the embattled National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas), saying it was a success story since it was formed. \u201cNsfas has not failed. Nsfas is a success story of this ANC government since it was established,\u201d Nzimande said. \u201cWe actually will be celebrating 30 years of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[11591,572,967,11183,7029,11545,7364,1196,3867],"class_list":["post-148911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-politics","tag-acknowledges","tag-challenges","tag-faces","tag-failures","tag-nsfas","tag-nzimande","tag-scheme","tag-story","tag-success"],"yoast_head":"\n