The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (Nsfas) has ushered in a few changes throughout this year, with current changes to student accommodation funds spending and placements soon taking effect.
Nsfas has decided to take a proactive role with regards to student accommodation for students funded through Nsfas. CEO of Nsfas, Andile Nongogo, says the financial aid provider spends a significant amount of money on student accommodation and should therefore have a significant influence on how that money is spent.
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 Nongogo.
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 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.
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.
“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,” he stressed.
Nongogo went on to unpack the Scheme’s proposed solutions, emphasising that all relevant stakeholders will be consulted and taken with through the journey; according to the CEO, such consultations have started.
Nsfas will provide accommodation funds based on the grading system residences would have to undergo. This process will also allow NSFAS to determine and decide 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.
Although students may find success when it comes to finding and securing accommodation, the living conditions make the experience unbearable.
The University of Zululand (UniZulu) serves as one such example.
Complaints of "inhumane" conditions in reference to student accommodation, struggles to find accommodation, and compromised safety while at off-campus residences have been plaguing the thousands of students at the university.
In order to deal with the situation of students who are stranded or otherwise living in unfavourable accommodation conditions, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) has taken steps to ensure that the institution builds more residences by undertaking a feasibility study.
Nsfas beneficiaries are often last on institutions' accommodation lists due to the perception of non- or late payment.
To avoid this, a potential beneficiary will be required to indicate whether they are in need of accommodation when they apply for funding. Once registered at an institution, they will be required to upload their proof of registration on the portal and will be assigned accommodation.
This process will consider issues of proximity to campus, especially for first-year students, with the aim of providing certainty to students regarding accommodation, ideally before they leave home in pursuit of their studies.
