Higher Education and Training Deputy Minister Buti Manamela has shared that ever since joining the department in 2018, the Minister has witnessed how protests centered around National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) payments have gone down.
Manamela has admitted there are challenges, but the plan is to make sure that the department tries to minimise all of these challenges.
In a statement, the Department Higher Education and Training (DHET) Minister, Dr. Blade Nzimande explained that students funded through the government bursary scheme will be receiving various allowances, including an accommodation allowance capped at R45 000.
Amid protests regarding student accommodation, University of Pretoria Student Representative President Njabulo Sibeko revealed that the university’s students are expected to pay up to R63 000 this year.
This is an indication of an ongoing university student accommodation crisis, which has sparked student protests in a number of universities on issues related to the newly introduced accommodation cap.
Higher Education believes universities that are being negatively impacted on by the Nsfas accommodation cap are predominantly universities that are in the urban areas.
The department does acknowledge that some of the accommodations do have state-of-the-art amenities and are within close proximity to campuses, but still thinks that these prices are “quite unreasonable because this is money that comes from the state through NSFAS allocation.
The money that the department has been able to accumulate since introducing the cap will be able to be redistributed to fund more students to have access to higher education.
However, private accommodation providers cannot go on without being unchecked, and it is for this reason that NSFAS plans to take a closer look at this and has taken things up with the Competition Commission.
