SOWETAN | Not too late to fix NSFAS mess

The administrative and leadership problems at NSFAS are not without consequences.

Our story on how a huge historical debt burden is impacting universities around the country is but one example of this. Several universities detailed how nonpayment of outstanding student fees were hampering their operations, including the quality of learning and teaching.

The University of Pretoria, for example, revealed that it has frozen building maintenance and refurbishing student residences as result of the nonpayment of debt dating back several years. Rhodes University, on the other hand, said it had to reprioritise its budget owing to the nonpayment by NSFAS.

The scheme, which has been beset by scandals recently including irregular appointments of companies for the direct payment of student allowances, is crippling universities, and making life harder for the very students it is meant to fund for education.

The trickle-down effect is that many students funded by NSFAS whose fees are outstanding are either deprived of seeing their results or made to jump through hoops before registering.

It does not matter how much higher education minister Blade Nzimande pleads with universities to allow students with outstanding fees to register. The fact is that the universities themselves rely on this money to fund their academic programmes, operations and create a conducive environment for students to study.

What Nzimande needs to focus his energy on is sorting out the mess at NSFAS. It is evident that poor leadership at NSFAS is the cause of all the problems including governance failures that have come to light recently.

Much of what we see playing out today – whether it is the cries of students whose allowances have not been paid since last year or escalating debt to universities – takes root from poor leadership.

Those entrusted with leading and administering this very important institution with a mandate to broaden access to post-school education and training to mostly poor students, are failing them.

The troubles at NSFAS have been allowed to persist for far too long. It is not too late for Nzimande to turn this around for the good of students and public universities.