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.
“Nsfas has not failed. Nsfas is a success story of this ANC government since it was established,” Nzimande said.
“We actually will be celebrating 30 years of Nsfas this year, and Nsfas is functioning optimally,” Nzimande said during the oral question in the National Council of Provinces on Tuesday.
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.
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.
“Nsfas, in its current form, is failing dismally,” Bara said.
Nzimande said Nsfas ha had discussions with the SIU and that they welcomed the investigation.
“We 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,” he said.
“Nsfas is supporting the children of the working class and the poor,” he said.
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.
He charged that the fact that Nsfas identified students who were benefiting unduly from its funding was proof that it was functional.
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.
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.
“We are not going to just discontinue funding but also hand them over to law enforcement agencies,” he said.
Asked whether criminal charges were levelled against 440 000 “ghost students” identified in an audit by Auditor-General in 2019-20, the minister said the affected students were funded legitimately.
He explained that their funding was not published in a government gazette, a move that was flagged as unauthorised expenditure by the Auditor-General.
“I dealt with that matter. That money did not go to ghost students. It was money that went to legitimate students.”
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%.
“Nsfas students, on average, are performing better than non- Nsfas funded students.”
He also said his department provided funding to tertiary education institutions to improve pass rate and through-put rate.
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.
“We 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,” he said.
Cape Times