The Ikusasa Student Financial Aid Programme, which is designed to help students gain access to tertiary education, is to be piloted next year, writes Gwebs Qonde.
The government has largely succeeded in opening up access to increasing numbers of students to university education, and technical and vocational education and training (TVET).
However, it remains a reality that our country’s higher education institutions are unaffordable for many students from disadvantaged backgrounds and middle-income families.
Competition for bursaries and scholarships means that not all students, no matter how deserving, can be fully supported. Student loans are also inaccessible to many as their family incomes do not meet the affordability criteria of lenders. Where they do, students and their families are saddled with huge debt burdens.
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has done much to deal with the problem for poor students, but students at costly institutions and in many professional programmes cannot be funded fully.
Too many young South Africans remain unable to access the opportunity to obtain a tertiary education.
We have seen this culminate in the #FeesMustFall protests and debates about the funding of higher education over the past years.
Substantial work has been done by the Department of Higher Education and Training since the Review of NSFAS in 2010, and the working group report on free university education for the poor in 2013.
A ministerial task team was set up this year to fast-track the development of an efficient and sustainable model to address the funding challenge of South Africa’s students.
It is this work that has culminated in the proposal for the Ikusasa Student Financial Aid Programme (ISFAP). The programme is designed to help students from poor and middle-income families - commonly referred to as the missing middle’ - to gain access to universities and TVET colleges, and to succeed through providing full financial support.
It will provide upfront financial support through bursaries and loans for a great number of students, and will do this through a combination of government and private-sector funding. It is intended as a long-term initiative that can address the need for affordable student funding in a sustainable way.
It is recognised that many students are not provided with quality career advice and development support to make informed choices that match their interests, abilities and future prospects. The department’s career development services are designed to provide support and advice so that good choices can be made on what and where to study.
The department is simultaneously investing in universities to develop their systems to track students through data analytics and provide advisory and other support services to increase students’ chances of success.
The new ISFAP scheme is designed to be integrated into these systems so that any student supported through this funding scheme is fully supported to make informed study and career choices.
ISFAP, through providing full funding for students, will also contribute to improving the employment prospects of graduates while simultaneously creating a highly qualified and sustainable pipeline for these professions that our country needs so desperately.
The funding programme is also an example of what happens when the public and private sectors come together to craft and implement constructive national solutions. While we often speak of public-private partnerships (PPPs), very rarely do the public get to experience and benefit from these in the way that they will with ISFAP beginning next year with the official launch of the pilot programme.
Throughout the ministerial task team process, one question came up consistently: what model is ISFAP based on, and what makes it so different? ISFAP is a hybrid funding model structured in the form of a mix of grants, loans and effective family contributions.
Based on a unique means test matrix, students who come from very poor backgrounds and are supported by the programme will receive fully subsidised funding, while students from middle-income families will receive funding that is split between loan, grant and family contribution, with a greater portion of their studies falling in the grant portion during their first and second year of study.
It is also underpinned by the provision of holistic support to funded students in order to ensure their success. The department has long recognised that it takes more than just financial support to ensure that students are successful in their studies.
Factors such as school quality, especially in poor and rural communities; high student-to-staff ratios at undergraduate level, and especially in first year; insufficient student support for academic and social adjustment to university life; and inadequate systems for identifying those who need such support can all hamper a student’s ability to succeed at tertiary level.
The ministerial task team has therefore proposed ways in which such support can be integrated into the ISFAP funding model.
Next year the ISFAP model will be piloted at six universities and one TVET college. The pilot project will fund the studies of around 2 000 students studying in a number of general formative degrees as well as seven professional qualifications and one artisan qualification for the duration of their studies.
The selected scarce-skills courses are those for medical doctors, pharmacists, actuaries, engineers, chartered accountants, prosthetists and artisans (welders, plumbers and electricians).
The general formative programmes will be in the humanities and social sciences, as well as general sciences. The goal of the pilot is to test aspects of the model and refine it.
At the same time, a full feasibility study on the model is under way, with the aim being to implement and roll-out the full programme as soon as the full model is developed and approved, and the various legal and administrative issues are in place.
The lessons learnt during the 2017 pilot, the comments received from the public consultation process, the results of a feasibility study that will be conducted by National Treasury running parallel to the pilot, and the recommendations of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Higher Education and Training will feed into the development of the final model.
The duration of the pilot project will depend on these processes, and whatever the outcome of these processes all students supported on the pilot project will be assisted for the duration of their studies.
Can the government and its partners guarantee the success of ISFAP, especially with regard to the current fees challenge? While this remains to be seen, we believe we have to give the programme a real chance if we are to give the majority of our university and TVET students an opportunity to succeed.
However, it is critical to the success of the programme that all stakeholders in this key national effort pull together.
No student who is academically deserving should be denied access to post-school education and training. In ISFAP, we may finally have a sustainable solution to providing an affordable funding solution for university and TVET education.
* Qonde is director-general in the Department of Higher Education and Training.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent