Higher education: The DA Youth launches a collective stand on financial aid
The Democratic Alliance (DA) Youth is today launching our Make Financial Aid Work campaign as a final and collective stand against the student financial aid crisis. We will be taking our campaign to students at 26 institutions of higher learning over the next month, who we hope will use it as a platform to make their voices heard and to share their financial aid stories.
At the culmination of our campaign, and after consultation with students, the DA Youth will be presenting a memorandum to the Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande. This will outline key areas for reform that we as a student collective believe, if addressed, will enable the National Student Financial Aid Scheme of South Africa (NSFAS) to provide tertiary education for significantly more South Africans.
Among the key proposals we intend to make are:
Only charging interest when a student completes their studies and only from 1 April in the year in which they are granted a loan.
- That NSFAS loans are able to be repaid through service to the state year on year in your field of study.
- Full course fees are paid for the most financially needy students to prevent financial exclusions.
- Loans are converted to bursaries on a sliding scale directly linked to academic performance.
- Socio-economic status rather than race is used as a proxy for support to reverse the trend of historically advantaged institutions with affluent black students receiving the same NSFAS allocations as historically disadvantaged institutions with poor students.
On too many campuses today violent protests about financial aid have come to define student life. These protests are often a desperate attempt by students to make their voices heard about an issue that has now reached crisis proportions.
The DA Youth believes that the doors of higher learning need to be open to all South Africans that have the talent and commitment to qualify for admission to a university, regardless of their circumstances.
NSFAS was originally setup to assist with the realisation of this ideal by offering financial aid in the form of loans and bursaries to deserving students. However, it has become clear after the publishing of the Report of the Ministerial Committee on the Review of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme that the NSFAS has failed unequivocally to deliver on in its mandate in its 12 years of existence.
Whilst the DA Youth welcomes the government's R150 million cash injection into NSFAS as well as the January 2011 announcement that final year students' loans will be converted into bursaries pending a pass mark, the DA Youth believes that these moves will yield very little benefit in the long term if the NSFAS system itself is not fundamentally overhauled.
The campaign can be followed on www.facebook.com/makefinancialaidwork.
Statement issued by Makashule Gana, DA Federal Youth Leader, April 7 2011
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