The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) confirmed to SMF News that there is currently no fixed deadline for the remaining migrations of Stellenbosch University (SU) students, but that it is prioritising the outstanding cases.
NSFAS must complete the migration and eligibility assesment period before students with outstanding cases can be confirmed as funded for the 2026 academic year. PHOTO: Supplied/ NSFAS website
NSFAS said that students who have not yet been migrated cannot currently be classified as either funded or unfunded because they still have to undergo migration and eligibility assessments for the 2026 academic year.
Migration will be finalised once the required corrections and validations are complete, after which qualifying students will be funded according to NSFAS requirements, they said.
For students, migration refers to the process of transferring their funding status and registration data from the previous academic year onto the new NSFAS system cycle so their allowances can continue without interruption.
When a student isn’t migrated, their funding effectively stalls – their tuition, accommodation and monthly allowances are not paid out, even if they previously qualified – until the university and NSFAS reconcile their records.
Student impact
For Nompumelelo, a fourth-year student who asked to be identified only by her first name, for fear that speaking out publicly could have consequences for her as a student still enrolled at the university, the uncertainty has continued.
She received NSFAS allowances for February, March, and April but said she has since received no clarity on her funding for the rest of the year.
“I’d just appreciate clarity on my current status,” she said.
She added that the uncertainty has affected her ability to afford food and travel from Jamestown to campus, while a couple from her church currently covers her accommodation.
Reasons behind the delay
NSFAS attributed the delays to corrections required on claims submitted by SU.
It said universities were required to claim two months of allowances under Circular 8 of 2025, but some claims SU submitted for the affected students reflected a longer period.
NSFAS said some corrections were finalised on the NSFAS system on 5 August and that it had since been working with SU to resolve the remaining cases. For students affected by qualification-code problems, NSFAS said it was awaiting a corrected qualification data file from the university.
The University has made “significant progress” in reducing the number of unresolved cases through continued engagement with NSFAS and multiple rounds of reconciliation, according to Martin Viljoen, SU spokesperson.
He said the outstanding cases involve different issues, including funding decisions, allowance adjustments, qualification-related discrepancies, and reconciliation between the university and NSFAS.
“This means that there is no single solution for all outstanding cases,” Viljoen said.
The university said it had continued advancing allowances to eligible students while the migration process remains unresolved, with its priority being to “minimise the impact on affected students”.
SU did not provide a current numerical breakdown of the affected groups, because reconciliation is still ongoing.
Inconsistent figures
A total of 382 of the 429 SU students whose 2026 NSFAS migration remains unresolved were still being processed as of 17 August, according to NSFAS, with 47 successfully migrated.
The Stellenbosch University (SU) Student Representative Council (SRC) has been engaging with the university over the outstanding migration cases of SU students. PHOTO: Supplied/Bulela Sikithi
The figure differs from that provided by the SU Student Representative Council (SRC) in its latest public update on 11 August. The SRC said about 437 students were eligible for migration, with a further 79 students eligible but affected by the late receipt of funding.
“This is a figure that is consistently changing and so we do not have an updated figure as of yet,” said the SRC to SMF News on 13 August.
Neither NSFAS nor the SRC has responded to SMF News’s request to explain the discrepancy between the figures.
Students at Stellenbosch University’s campus are facing uncertainty over NSFAS-funding. NSFAS says 382 SU students were still awaiting migration for the 2026 academic year as of 17 August, with South African Union of Students (SAUS) now threatening legal action over students who remain unfunded. PHOTO: Mophethi Mabeba
SAUS perspective
Meanwhile, Dr Thato Masekoa, South African Union of Students (SAUS) spokesperson, said the union raised the migration problems with NSFAS and its administrator.
SAUS then escalated the matter to Dr Nomusa Dube-Ncube, Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training (DHET) who instructed NSFAS to resolve the matter, after which the union began seeing progress, he said.
The union had now resorted to taking NSFAS and DHET to court over students who remain unfunded, Masekoa said, arguing that the institutions must account for funding decisions made during the academic year.
“The sector is [in] a dire state currently,” said Masekoa.
SMF News was unable to get a response to follow up questions regarding this matter.
DHET had not responded to a request for comment on the legal action or SAUS’s claims by the time of publication.