The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is not a profit-making or revenue-collecting organisation. Its operating model is quite simple: we take money provided by the government and use it to assist poor students with academic funding. When the students who are funded are employed later in their lives, we do not accept any money from them unless they earn R30,000 a year or more. Depending on individual circumstances and the size of their income, the NSFAS is able to accept as little as R80 or R90 per month in loan repayments. The notion that we are a debt trap is incorrect. The amount of money we collect annually would be greater than the money we distribute if NSFAS were a money-making scheme. In the 2014-15 financial year, the organisation’s new grants income for student loans and bursaries increased from R8.8bn to R9.4bn, representing year-on-year growth of 7%, despite a decline in our recoveries of loans. Of the allocated funds, the entity disbursed R9.3bn in financial ...
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