Update: Steps taken by Unisa to assist students affected by late NSFAS disbursements

During 2018 Unisa students depending on NSFAS grants experienced several challenges, including the late approval of applications, delays in the disbursement of funds and delays in the release of book allowances (sBux). As these delays impacted negatively on the registration of students, Unisa pro-actively took steps to ameliorate the situation. These steps included the following:

• For returning students who were funded by NSFAS in 2017, Unisa agreed to finalise their registrations without waiting for the necessary NSFAS approval or funding to be finalised, as long as the students met the NSFAS progression requirements. These students were registered (without paying the normal initial fee) and provided with all services.
• For new NSFAS grantees (first-time entering students who met the NSFAS income requirement of an annual household income of less than R350 000) who applied through the Unisa system to NSFAS at the beginning of the year, we used a service provider to do an income vetting (at our expense) and registered qualifying students without waiting for NSFAS approval. 
• There are also returning students who were not previously funded by NSFAS, but who applied directly to NSFAS at the end of last year. Since we do not have a record of these applications, we could not anticipate who would fall into this group.  On 6 March 2018, Unisa was informed of around 6000 students in this category that were funded. Although very late in the academic semester, a decision was taken to register these students, but to give them the option to transfer their registration to the second semester without cost to them, should they deem the remaining academic time too short to master the material.

In spite of the measures taken, a number of students were registered late and there are still students who have not received their book allowances. To further mitigate the negative effect that this might have on the performance and academic progression of students, Unisa announced the following concessions to affected students on Friday 20 April 2018:

1. Affected students who managed to submit their assignments, but who are not ready to write their examinations during the May / June 2018 examination period, will be allowed to defer (move) their examinations for semester 1 to semester 2, at no cost to themselves.
2. Affected students who failed to submit their assignments will be allowed to cancel their registrations for semester 1, and move their modules to semester 2 without forfeiting fees.
3. Affected students who have progressed sufficiently with their academic programme and are confident that they are ready to write their examinations during the May / June 2018 examination period, still have the opportunity to do so.
4. Affected students who registered for both semester 1 and semester 2 will be allowed to amend their registration without forfeiting fees.
5. Year modules are not affected, as there is still sufficient academic time left.

Affected students will be contacted individually via e-mail with information on the processes to be followed to exercise the option(s) that they have chosen.

Our recommendation is that students should carefully consider their preparedness for the examination when they decide on which option(s) to select. It is better to postpone or defer a module than taking the risk of writing the examination while being ill-prepared.

There were calls to postpone the examination by three weeks as an alternative measure to compensate for the delays in funding and late book allowance disbursement. After careful consideration, it was decided to rather resort to the measures listed above. 

The reasons for this decision include inter alia the negative effect that a postponement or extension of the examination will have on the release date of examination results, and the negative impact on the registration period for the second semester and the resulting knock-on effects on the second semester academic programme.

The additional period of three weeks, requested by students, would in most cases also not be sufficient to compensate for the weeks of academic time lost. In addition, the huge logistical challenges of finding appropriate examination venues nationally and internationally, the delivery of question papers and answer sheets, the appointment of invigilators for an additional period, the direct and indirect costs of an extended examination, and the impact on our system stability were taken into consideration.