The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas) ushered in a few changes throughout this year, with current changes to student accommodation and placements soon taking effect.
Finding and securing accommodation is one of the students' many major concerns as beneficiaries, particularly because there is a frequent struggle to secure a place at campus or private residences, due to the common shortages of university accommodation.
In order to curve some of the difficulties students face when trying to find accommodation, Nsfas is in the process of creating a "Student Accommodation Portal."
The changes would be implemented through the scheme’s administration of the entire student accommodation approach as well as increasing student accommodation capacity for Nsfas beneficiaries.
"Last year, we spent approximately 12 billion [Rand] on student accommodation, yet we had no say in costings and we were not part of the process of accrediting accommodation. The decision was made for Nsfas to be fully involved in the process to manage costs and prevent susceptible fraudulent instances”, said Nsfas CEO, Andile Nongogo.
The student accommodation portal is ready for accommodation providers to register and load their accommodation to be considered for Nsfas beneficiaries.
Once signed in, accommodation providers will be able to list their properties by providing their property names, location and images. Nsfas will then contact them and send a panel of experts to accredit and grade the properties to ensure that they are suitable for student living.
The portal will reportedly allow the accreditation of accommodation providers, grading of the proposed accommodation, assigning the cost-based grading, and allocating accommodation to students.
Additionally, students will be able to log queries on the portal related to their allocated accommodation, such as maintenance and relocation requests. This process will apply to both private and institution-owned accommodation.
“As part of the consultative process, Nsfas held a student accommodation summit in June 2022 and Public, Private Partnerships (PPPs) on student accommodation provision was one of the topics that took Centre stage,” stressed Nongogo.
The creation of this Portal would be to ensure that places of residences meet the requirements to properly be accredited by deploying a team to assess the state of accommodation registered on the portal.
Nsfas will provide accommodation funds based on the grading system residences would have to undergo. This process will also allow Nsfas to determine what it is prepared to pay, thus making savings in the process.
Nsfas will work with DHET and DBSA (as it has a model to determine the cost) in assigning costs to grades.
All accommodation providers who would like to list their properties for Nsfas beneficiaries may use the student accommodation information website.
