NSFAS moots new student aid model
THE NEW student financial aid model to be piloted in 2017 will have a threshold of where “free” education stops. Thereafter, a combination of student grants and loans will cater for the “missing middle”, said Sizwe Nxazana, chairman of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).
Earlier in September, protests erupted at several universities across the country, after Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande said universities could increase their fees but recommended an 8% cap.
The minister said fees for students qualifying for funding under the NSFAS, as well as the missing middle, would not increase in 2017.
The protests have been marked by a heavy police presence on campuses and have turned violent in some instances.
“Actuaries are working on a threshold where ‘free stops’, and it could be between household incomes of R150,000 and R200,000, said Nxasana.
“From there, a combination of grants and a loan would apply for households with an income of R600,000,” he said.
Nxasana said a fundamental issue that NSFAS would be tackling with the model was the challenge of high dropout rates among the students it funds.
He said that, out of the 480,000 students in universities and colleges that the scheme funded, there was a dropout rate of 63%, with 7% of first-years dropping out.
He said a key issue of protesters was not that higher education is expensive and unaffordable, but that those who have some chance of getting in are spat out of the model “for reasons including underfunding”.
The new NSFAS model, which will be piloted next year in six universities and one college, will only be implemented in 2018.
“Clearly these students don’t have the patience and want it now. We hope that these protests will not end in anarchy that will destroy the chances of us introducing the new model,” said Nxasana, who was speaking at the launch conference of Future Nation Schools on Friday in Lyndhurst, a group of schools of which he is a founder.
Future Nation Schools is a subsidiary of the Sifiso Learning Group, an education company that operates a portfolio of brands, including Future Nation Launchpad Future, Nation Schools, Sifiso EdTech, Sifiso Publishing and Sifiso Education Properties.
The Sifiso Learning Group aims to produce private schools accessible to middle to high income households, with fees from R18,000 to R50,000 a year, depending on the school’s location and specifications.
Two schools will be opened in 2017 in Lyndhurst and Fleurhof, Johannesburg.
Nxasana said the private schools to be opened in Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZuluNatal in years to come would not seek to discredit the public education system because there are 30-million children in the public system with less than a million in the private education system.