NSFAS: Scrap the cap and #raisetheroof

The Democratic Alliance Students Organisation (DASO) has officially launched a petition urging the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) to increase the accommodation cap for students across South Africa.

DASO notes the struggles faced by students with respect to the ongoing NSFAS-induced accommodation crisis and is committed to taking action.

Students are encourage to join DASO in petitioning so as to ensure that:

Scrap the Accommodation Cap, it should be looked into at a Case by Case per institution.

NSFAS revises its existing funding model to include the “missing middle” and minimise financial exclusions.

Policy is readjusted to allow private institutions to enrol more students considering the space constraints at public institutions.

Decentralise NSFAS’s functions for administrative purposes.

It is not right for students across our country to have their right to human dignity, housing, and education to be consistently violated by NSFAS in this manner. Students are forced to sleep on sidewalks without access to adequate housing.

As DASO, we have also written to the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and subsequently observed how our pleas on behalf of students were not taken seriously.

While students sleep on the streets, NSFAS is being investigated by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) for allegations of corruption and maladministration. This inadequate institution must be fundamentally reconfigured considering these serious allegations.

Over the coming weeks, DASO will continuously elaborate on practical solutions to the accommodation crisis while calling for an overall restructuring of NSFAS to include students of the “missing middle” – students who are above the current threshold of R350000.

DASO will continue to fight until a path that gives power to the students of South Africa forged, so that no student is left behind.

Issued by Liam Jacobs, DASO Federal Leader, 16 April 2023, 16 April 2023