By Thapelo Molefe
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has said that no qualifying student should sleep in a library or be left homeless during the 2026 academic year.
“One of the things we’ve set out as a key performance indicator for ourselves is that within four to eight hours of a student arriving on campus, if they qualify for accommodation, they should be placed,” Acting NSFAS CEO Waseem Carrim said at a media briefing on Tuesday.
“That will ensure that we don’t see instances of students sleeping in libraries or being homeless as a result of NSFAS’s operational failures.”
The briefing comes as NSFAS prepares for a “stable start” to the 2026 academic year, following years of operational crises that have repeatedly disrupted university registrations and student housing.
According to NSFAS, the scheme received 893,847 applications for 2026 funding. Of these, 609,653 were approved, while 49,538 were rejected, primarily because household income exceeded the R350,000 eligibility threshold.
Carrim said that the rejected applicants were largely first-time students who did not meet the financial criteria.
All 2026 funding decisions were finalised by 31 December to prevent registration delays.
Universities were required to submit 2025 academic results by 15 December, allowing eligibility for continuing students to be confirmed before registration opened. Institutions were warned that students enrolled in expired or unapproved qualification codes would not be funded.
To support the registration period, NSFAS will deploy servicing administrators and graduate interns to all 26 universities and 50 TVET colleges from 13 January to 31 March.
An upfront payment will be made on 1 February covering book allowances and one month of meal, accommodation, travel and personal care allowances, while TVET colleges will receive advance tuition payments at the end of January. Appeals must be lodged within 30 days of rejection, with outcomes expected by 16 February.
The scale of the demand, Carrim said, highlighted the central role NSFAS continues to play in South Africa’s higher education system. He said that more than 5.5 million beneficiaries have passed through the scheme over the years and that 70% of NSFAS beneficiaries come from households previously dependent on social grants.
“Being a graduate in South Africa is critical to achieving social mobility,” Carrim said, adding that 60% of government chief directors, deputy directors-general and directors-general were previously funded by NSFAS.
Carrim also pushed back against calls for universities to take over the administration of student funding, saying that such past arrangements were far from flawless.
“There was no perfection when the funds were managed directly by universities,” he said.
“In fact, universities would not have had to have returned billions of rands in funds back to NSFAS if they were managing the funds appropriately.”
He said NSFAS believes a centralised system remains critical not only for funding access, but for monitoring student performance and graduation outcomes, even as the scheme works to address its own administrative shortcomings.
However, questions from journalists at the briefing highlighted persistent concerns about NSFAS’s instability, with all senior executives currently serving in acting positions.
The Acting board chairperson, Dr Mugwena Maluleke, acknowledged the challenges, but said governance structures were being rebuilt, including the establishment of a functional Audit and Risk Committee to address legacy issues flagged by the Auditor-General and under investigation by the Special Investigating Unit.
Addressing the so-called “missing middle” students, Carrim said that NSFAS received about 12,000 loan applications, compared with nearly 900,000 bursary applications, indicating low uptake.
He said rejected bursary applicants are offered the option to apply for loans and that the future of the loan model will form part of broader consultations on a revised higher education funding framework in 2026.
“We’ve put short-term measures in place to ensure a stable 2026,” Carrim said. “But the long-term sustainability of NSFAS and the higher education sector is a question the country must answer collectively.”
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