Cape Town - The student funding scheme is in crisis, with a huge gap of R51 billion between its budget and the amount needed to meet demand.
The situation is so serious that the Department of Higher Education and Training will have to ask the National Treasury to increase the National Student Financial Aid Scheme’s budget dramatically from its R6bn this year.
Studies had found the funding available fell far short of the need, the department’s director-general, Gwebinkundla Qonde, told Parliament’s standing committee on appropriations on Tuesday.
Some universities and colleges had to draw on their cash reserves to meet their students’ needs.
Last year, R1bn was taken from the National Skills Fund to help cover the scheme’s R2.6bn shortfall.
“This R1bn was a one-off amount and was not part of the medium-term expenditure framework baseline,” he said.
Funding all students who qualified for loans and bursaries from the scheme would require R36bn for those at university and R15bn for those at vocational training colleges.
“You will recall chair that the National Development Plan is predicting an increase in the number of students,” Qonde told MPs.
The department’s chief financial officer, Theuns Tredeux, told the committee that the cost of higher education had increased significantly in the past 20 years.
The aid scheme was launched in 1991 with R441 million.
The number of university students it was funding had grown from 162 000 last year to 194 000 this year. The figure would rise to 205 000 in the next two years.
The number of college students it was helping had increased from 168 000 to 198 000.
The government had allocated a further R9.2bn this year to ease the pressure on the fund, said Tredeux.
It had been found that some students and their parents were working with university and college staff to falsify information to secure loans or bursaries.
A forensic investigation would be launched to uncover such cases, Tredeux said.
The funding scheme’s chief executive, Msulwa Daca, told MPs the system had been centralised since the beginning of the year to curb fraud and corruption.
Before, students received finances from the universities and colleges at which they were registered.
Cape Times