LETSIE, WALTER TEBOGO_554
THE higher education and training portfolio committee wants the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) to ensure students who qualified for the financial assistance do get it.
“We call on the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) to do due diligence in processing all 2025 applications and ensure all students eligible for funding were funded,” the committee’s chairperson Tebogo Letsie said when briefing journalists during the weekly committee media engagement in Parliament on Thursday.
Letsie said there have been instances of wrongfully funded students who were defunded in the middle of last year, leading to mental problems.
“We see the Special Investigating Unit is hard at work identifying those former students who wrongfully benefitted from the scheme and to recoup some of the funds,” he said.
Letsie noted that NSFAS has indicated that their comprehensive funding model was not yet in place, but they do have a bursary and loan scheme.
The loan scheme is meant for the “missing middle” students and NSFAS had informed the portfolio committee that it was ready to assist those students in the 2025 academic year, he said.
NSFAS opened applications in September and closed them in December.
According to Letsie, it has indicated that they received over 936 000 applications and over 678 000 were provisionally funded if they found a place to study at tertiary institutions.
“What is more impressive is over 659 00 of those were Sassa beneficiaries,” he said.
Letsie also said the change in the release of matric results was a concern to the institutions of higher learning, especially universities and TVET colleges as the change impacted on the start of the academic programme.
“Some TVET colleges opened on January 13 and matric results were only released by provinces the following day,” he said.
Letsie also stated that some health science universities opened on January 2, and those students who have done well and wanted to study medicine would have to do a catch-up programme.
“As the higher education portfolio committee, we, indeed, are intending on having a discussion with the portfolio committee on education and the ministries of both department to find an amicable solution to this challenge.”
He also noted that the Department of Higher Education has struggled to achieve graduate and admission target in engineering, natural science, human and animal science as they did not yield enough matriculants with good grades in science, engineering, mathematics and science subjects.
“It is critical both Department of Basic Education and Higher education and training find ways to engage how we can assist to help these students who are doing STEM subjects, maybe, to engage TVET and universities that train teachers to find suitable solutions.
“If we need to revisit how educators are trained at these universities especially on the STEM subjects, is something we need to do,” he said.
Letsie also said the portfolio committee wants Minister for Higher Education and Training Nobuhle Nkabane to appoint an independent assessor for the University of Limpopo.
“The committee has called on the minister of Higher Education to consider appointing an independent assessor for the university to investigate the state of affairs at that institution particularly governance, management and human resources as it relates to allegations of irregular appointments.”
He stated that the committee was not asking to put the institution under administration.
“We ask the minister to investigate many issues of maladministration and governance collapse.
“We believe there is governance collapse in the appointment of the vice-chancellor beyond the stipulated period of two years, the appointment of council chair beyond two successive terms, and continued appointment of the institutional forum without elections since 2017.
“As it relate to issues of management and wasteful usage of resources, the committee noted concerns of legal cases the university lost in court.
“The committee had a meeting with the university in November and did not get answers it had wanted and the institution did not respond to follow up requests.”
Letsie said the committee has since received whistle-blower reports after it met the university.
“We are to engage with the Speaker to use mechanisms that are in place to get answers from that institution.”
mayibongwe.maqhina@inl.co.za