Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande.
This week, Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande announced a long-overdue intervention to remedy a problem that is arguably at the heart of South Africa’s student funding crisis: the exclusion of the so-called missing middle from the state’s financial aid scheme.
With R3.8 billion set aside to support some of these students (47% of them), more South Africans will have access to tertiary education, often a vital step towards securing a future in this country’s brutal economy.
Students were previously only eligible for National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) funding if their annual household income was below R350 000, leaving the missing middle — students described as too poor to be rich, but too rich to be poor — on their own.
Although this development should be celebrated as part of a hard-fought victory, the truth is there is still a lot that needs to be done to ensure that the generations to come can enjoy the barrier-smashing power of higher education.
And it seems that the best place to start is with the NSFAS itself.
If you go to Nzimande’s Facebook page right now, you will find many comments about the bureaucratic nightmare that students have been subjected to by the scheme. On the page’s most recent post — wishing its readers a prosperous new year — one comment simply reads: “Killing future empowerment of the next generation. We want to study.”
The scheme’s governance and administrative problems are well documented. Indeed, it was not so long ago that the South African Union of Students called for Nzimande’s removal after 20 000 students were not paid allowances in 2023 caused by problems with the scheme’s funding system.
Given that direct funding through NSFAS has grown substantially in recent years — while funding for universities and colleges has been cut in real terms — it is of utmost importance that the scheme delivers.
If it doesn’t, tertiary education stands to become more inaccessible than ever because universities are forced to raise their fees in the absence of inadequate state funding.
In light of this dilemma, last year the National Planning Commission proposed that a study examine the scheme, looking at how it has affected the through-put rate and to what extent it has alleviated inequality.
The National Development Plan (NDP) envisions that South Africa will have over 10 million university graduates with a minimum of a bachelor’s degree by 2030. By 2021, only 1.7 million people held a university degree, according to data from the higher education department.
By expanding access to NSFAS, South Africa could get a lot closer to achieving its 2030 goals, including the NDP’s economic aspirations. But as long as the student financial aid scheme is broken, these will remain the dreams of a once more-hopeful country.