This week the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) announced that the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) will be allocated a R49 billion budget for the 2022/23 financial year.
Higher Education, Science and Innovation Minister, Dr Blade Nzimande, delivered his budget speech this week, unpacking some of the key areas where funds will be allocated over the coming financial year.
He also emphasised that much of the spending for this NSFAS budget will be focused on students from previously disadvantaged backgrounds.
Nzimande added that the department would be, “putting a sustainable mechanism in place to support students from the so-called ‘missing middle’ and postgraduate students.”
One of the areas where this can happen is the National Skills Fund, which sees a sizeable boost of R866 million for the coming financial year.
Added to this is R221 million to the National Research Foundation (NRF), R80 million to the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD), R37.9 million to the DHET Internal Scholarship programme and R701.9 million for the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs).
“As part of the development of our Comprehensive Student Funding model… we are engaging both the public and private components of the financial sector to come up with a funding model to support students in the ‘Missing middle’ income bracket and post graduate students who cannot secure funding from the National Research Foundation,” the minister continued.
Looking at critical infrastructure at an institution level, the DHET says across 26 local universities, over both the the 2022/23 and 2023/24 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF), that a budget of R7.584 is available.
R2.953 billion of this will be going towards student housing and specifically the delivery of 16 858 beds across 11 universities.
While that is a sizeable figure, Nzimande correctly acknowledged that more needs to be done in this area for students. “Clearly R2.953 billion is inadequate for student accommodation, therefore we will seek private sector partnerships, including those already indicating they are investing on their own,” he highlighted.
Lastly looking to the future, the DHET confirmed that it will be conducting feasibility studies on the new science and innovation universities it is planning to create, along with a crime detection institution to the tune of R6 million.
While all of the above NSFAS plans sound promising, given the current unemployment rate in the country, the prospect of finding a job once you have completed your studies looks even more daunting than getting into a tertiary institution and completing them.
[Image – CC BY-ND 2.0 GovernmentZA on Flickr]
