The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is under severe pressure to reform its operations after the Auditor General revealed that more than 800 deceased students and approximately 14,000 ineligible individuals are still receiving financial aid disbursements. The Higher Education Department has issued the NSFAS board a three-month window to investigate the mismanagement and implement corrective measures.
The findings represent a significant failure of the scheme's verification and management systems, raising serious questions about oversight and the integrity of the data used to determine eligibility. NSFAS is the primary means through which South Africa provides financial support to students from low-income households at public universities and TVET colleges.
The Auditor General's findings are part of a broader pattern of concerns about NSFAS governance that have accumulated over several years, including previous reports of irregular expenditure, disbursement errors, and administrative inefficiencies.
Higher Education Minister Dr Nobuhle Nkabane has described the situation as unacceptable and said the department would hold the board to account for delivering a credible remediation plan within the stipulated three months. Failure to do so could result in further intervention by the department.
Student representative councils and higher education advocacy groups have called for a full independent audit of NSFAS's beneficiary database, arguing that the scale of the problem suggests systemic rather than isolated administrative failures. They have also renewed calls for the scrapping of the direct payment system in favour of the previous institution-based disbursement model.
