1 hour ago
1
SEE YOUR AD HERE
Reflections of former NSFAS Administrator, Dr. Randall Carolissen, on what went wrong, what worked, and what reforms are required.
29 JUN 2026, 14:59
10 min read
Reflections of former NSFAS Administrator, Dr. Randall Carolissen, on what went wrong, what worked, and what reforms are required.
Having been a part of NSFAS between 2018 and 2020, and with my experience in higher education, I’ve been asked many times in different circles what my views were given the unending challenges at this important institution.
There are moments in one’s career when a calling arrives not because it is convenient, but because it is necessary. In August2018, Minister Naledi Pandor asked me to take on the role of Administrator at NSFAS. I was not looking for a new challenge. At the time, I was at SARS, deeply invested in a modernisation programme that was working and operating at the cutting edge of maintaining South Africa’s fiscal sovereignty.
Leaving such a rewarding and stimulating environment felt premature. The agreed terms of reference were far-reaching, vesting the powers of both the board and executive in the Administrator.
The decision was not an obvious one. When I consulted friends and family about whether I should accept the NSFAS position, they were horrified that I was even considering it.My son put it most bluntly: “I think Daddy lost his mind.”
Why NSFAS Mattered Personally
When I considered what NSFAS represents, and what was at stake if it continued to fail, I was pulled out of my comfort zone. My reasons for accepting the role were as personal as they were professional.
In the 1980s, a state bursary enabled me to study at the University of the Western Cape. It came through the Coloured Affairs Department, a system created to perpetuate apartheid dogma and one I have no interest in celebrating. Yet, at that time, the conditional bursary opened a door that would otherwise have remained firmly shut.
That pathway to higher education, and the career progression that followed, left me with an enduring conviction: when the state gets student funding right, lives can be transformed. It gives young people real hope for a better future, changes the trajectory of families, and, over time, reshapes society’s ladders of aspiration.
At its best, NSFAS was conceived in our democratic order to be precisely that instrument: a means of achieving restorative justice at scale.
The Democratic Promise of Student Funding
Since its inception, NSFAS has funded more than 4.5 million students, representing an investment of over R171 billion in human capital and in accelerating social mobility among the previously disenfranchised. The vast majority of these beneficiaries were first-generation students. Many went on to assume leadership roles across South Africa, carrying with them the opportunity that public funding made possible.
That is not an abstraction. It is the promise of a democratic South Africa being made real.
What We Inherited
What I found on arrival was a hollowed-out institution: one without the governance, systems, and operational capacity expected of an entity responsible for budgets running into tens of billions of rands.
The warning signs were already clear. In July 2018, auditors had issued NSFAS with a NOCLAR report, citing material non-compliance with the Public Finance Management Act. A PricewaterhouseCoopers assessment had exposed an ICT infrastructure that was, in practical terms, dysfunctional and unfit for purpose.
The institutional weakness was compounded by a major policy shift. The previous December, President Zuma had announced the move from loans to a full bursary scheme for first-time students. The policy had significant merit, but it arrived without the systems, staffing, or planning required to implement it properly.
Stabilising the System
By the time I assumed office in August 2018, most students for that academic year remained unfunded. Universities were being disrupted by waves of protest, and the broader higher education sector was teetering on the brink of paralysis.
Our immediate priority was to stabilise support for students already in the system. Within six weeks, we released R13 billion by applying intensive data analytics, reconciling accounts, and matching student records across fragmented campus databases. We expedited fee transfers to universities, reached settlements with accommodation providers, and rescued a 2018 academic year that had been genuinely at risk.
That stability made it possible to plan for the beginning of the 2019 academic year and to begin designing and implementing more durable systems.
None of this work was straightforward. The data architecture we inherited lacked proper design and consistency. Releasing those funds required detailed, unglamorous technical work, carried out under extreme pressure and with very little sleep.
Two Controversial Decisions
Two decisions taken during that first period attracted considerable controversy and deserve to be revisited.
• Cancelling the VBS Mutual Bank tender. The tender for student payment disbursements had been awarded while the bank was already in serious financial difficulty, pointing to a critical failure of due diligence. We cancelled it. The subsequent collapse of VBS and the prosecutions that followed are now a matter of public record.
• Scrapping the SBux voucher system. The SBux system dictated where and how students could spend their allowances. On investigation, it was found to be riddled with fraud and syndicated criminal activity. Beyond the corruption, its deeper problem was the premise on which it rested: that adult students could not be trusted to manage their own finances.
Enabling a faster COVID-19 response.
This reform also created space for further innovation when the higher education system was paralysed by COVID-19. NSFAS was able to redirect part of the learning allowance, previously disguised as a book allowance that mainly enabled unfettered access for book dealers, towards the provision of computers for students.
The initial laptop tender, intended to serve both university and TVET students, was cancelled because of political interference in the procurement process. Once resolved, the programme helped alleviate COVID-related hardship and has since become firmly institutionalised.
Spectres of drunken students were unsuccessfully invoked to persuade me to maintain control through the continued issuance of vouchers. We removed all intermediaries from the payment channel and replaced them with direct payments. Direct payments remain the logical choice, although the recommendations and blueprints I provided in 2020 have still not been implemented.
Measurable Progress, Real Costs
By the end of my tenure, the results of the administration were measurable.
NSFAS received its first unqualified audit from the Auditor-General since 2011. The Annual Performance Score rose from 12.5% in 2018 to over 80% in 2019. As the beneficiary base expanded, the parliamentary appropriation grew from R22 billion to R35 billion.
Forensic investigations also uncovered more than 440,000 irregular student records, representing R7.5 billion in irregular expenditure. This required the 2018 Annual Report to be restated, but it also gave the institution, for the first time, an honest picture of the scale of the problem it had inherited.
None of this work came without personal cost. Technical experts brought in to support the process received death threats. Smear campaigns were threaded through the media. The environment was, to put it plainly, a war zone.
After Administration: Gains Lost and Lessons Ignored
What is most troubling, looking back, is what happened afteradministration. A Ministerial Task Team was established with a clear mandate: to translate the gains made during administration into a durable institutional foundation. Its recommendations aligned closely with what we had done and what we had proposed.
Yet those carefully considered recommendations were not sustained. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they were deliberately jettisoned.
Accountability and Recovery
By 2020, we had reported 40,000 instances of irregular funding to the SIU and requested the use of its powers to subpoena personal records. In 2024, the President issued a proclamation that, together with the record-keeping we had put in place, could support large-scale recoveries and, where appropriate, criminal prosecution of those who acted with malice and impunity.
A Repeating Pattern
NSFAS has now been placed under administration three times in a single decade, each time recovering ground that was laterlost again. I raise this not to relitigate the past, but because the pattern matters for what comes next.
The Minister of Higher Education and Training, Buti Manamela, has been direct about the need for fundamental reform at NSFAS, particularly in governance and accountability.
The Reforms Still Required
The reforms required at NSFAS are well documented and worth repeating. They are not cosmetic adjustments; they go to the heart of how the institution of this national import must function if it is to serve students reliably and with integrity.
a. Pay students directly. Students must receive their funding directly into their own accounts, with all intermediaries removed from the disbursement chain.
b. Rebuild the ICT systems. NSFAS’s technology systemsmust be rebuilt from a genuine institutional needs assessment,rather than patched incrementally, as they have been for years.
c. Cross-validate data in real time. Eligibility data must be subjected to cross validation in real time with SARS, the Department of Home Affairs, and the Department of Social Development. This is both feasible and necessary for accurate eligibility determination.
d. Reform governance. Board composition and governance structures must be designed to support institutional performance, rather than to represent sectoral constituencies.
e. Strengthen accountability. Lifestyle audits and proper vetting of senior appointments are not optional extras. They are essential safeguards for an institution responsible for public money and students’ futures.
Why NSFAS is still required
South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world, and higher education remains one of the most reliable pathways out of poverty. A properly functioning NSFAS is therefore not a technical matter confined to the higher education sector. It is a test of whether the democratic state can deliver on one of its most fundamental commitments: that where you were born, and what your parents earned, should not determine whether you can access the education needed to build a life.
Every year that NSFAS fails to function as it should, that commitment is broken for hundreds of thousands of students and their families. The impact of NSFAS transcends individual benefit. The economic spin-offs are vast and transformative and the comfort of being funded and fed proved to significantly enhance success rates of students.
I accepted the role in 2018 in that spirit, and I reflect on it in the same spirit now. This valuable institution can work. By2020, a team of patriotic experts had demonstrated that NSFAS could be stabilised, turned around, and set on a path of measurable progress.
What Is Required Now
What is required now is sustained political will: to implement reforms that are already understood; to protect the technical capacity that makes delivery possible; and to govern the institution in a way that serves students.
Strong institutions and well-designed systems provide the resilience needed to turn political intent into lasting delivery. They also help insulate the institution from corruption, rent-seeking, and the recurring failures that continue to underminethe noble intent of NSFAS.
The Minister has signalled that intent. I hope, for the sake of every student waiting on a funding decision, that this time it holds.
Randall Carolissen (PhD) served as Administrator of NSFAS from August 2018 to December 2020. He is Chairperson of the Sol Plaatje Council and previously served as head of the SARS Tax and Customs Institute and as Chairperson of the Wits University Council.
English (US) ·