National Student Financial Aid Scheme: input by Higher Education South Africa; Masakh' Isizwe Bursary briefing

Meeting report

Higher Education Institutions Perspective on the operation of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS)
Mr Thomas Eloff, Chairperson of HESA and Vice-Chancellor of the North West University, gave a detailed presentation on the HESA perspective on the operation of the NSFAS. The presentation highlighted the HESA mandate and role as well as the Higher Education (HE) sector’s achievements and challenges. The presentation also looked at HE funding trends and the implications of the funding trends on HE institutions. The presentation focused on HESA’s views on NSFAS in terms of strengths and areas of improvement.
           
Mr Eloff explained that HESA was a voluntary organisation which represented the public higher education sector in South Africa. It was an independent body made up of 23 public Higher Education Institutions in the country. The Vice-Chancellors of these universities were Directors of the HESA Board. HESA Executive Office was led by the Chief Executive Officer and just over 40 staff members. The Executive Office facilitated the design, planning and implementation of programmes and projects to advance the sector’s interests

HESA had three main roles: Policy analysis and strategic research (Head); Advocacy and stakeholder influence (Voice); and Sector support (Hands). HESA had the following programmes: Higher Education Leadership and Management; Enrollment Services Programme; and an HIV and AIDS Programme. In terms of the focus areas: Focus Area One was about building the sector’s capacity and capabilities; Focus Area Two was about strengthening the sector’s research, and technology capabilities; and international and continental collaborations; Focus Area Three aimed at enhancing the sector’s to national imperatives focusing on skills; Focus Area Four aimed at enhancing sector collaboration; and Focus Area Five which aimed at organising for effective and delivery

The Committee was provided with details of the size and shape of Higher Education Institutions in terms of figures for the number of HE institutions and the figures for student enrollments. Student enrollments had increased from 585 000 in 1999 to 757 000 in 2007 in public HE Institutions. There were 50 Public Further Education and Training (FET) colleges with approximately 378 000 students. Approximately 30 000 students had enrolled with private higher education providers and approximately 60 500 international students had been enrolled in public HE Institutions in 2007. The achievements of HE sector for the period (2000-2007) had included growth in undergraduate enrollments in public HE Institutions by 4.9% per annum; growth in the enrollments for PhD degree studies by 6.6% per annum; growth in the enrollment of African students in public HE Institutions by 6% per annum and growth in the e of women students in public HE Institutions at a rate of 5.5% per annum. African students now made up 63% of the public HE student numbers – up from 58% in 2000; whilst white students now made up 56% of the total student numbers – up from 52% in 2000.Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) disciplines had been growing by 4.3% per annum. For all undergraduate studies, the number of graduates had been increasing by 5.9%. Publication research outputs had been growing by 4.7% per annum.

The challenges facing the HE system included issues such as the stagnation in terms of the proportion of students enrolled in SET which had remained fairly constant at 28% or 29% during the period 2000 to 2007 due to increases in enrollments in Business/ Management. Work needed to be done to increase the gross HE participation rate (the current participation rate increased by only 1% from 15% in 2001 to 16% in 2007 – far from the goal of 20% in the National Plan for Higher Education (2001) to be reached by about 2011 – 2016. High drop-out rates andlow graduation rates were another challenge. Rates were skewed in favour of White and Indian students – while more African and Colored students had gained access to HE, relatively fewer of them completed their undergraduate studies.

In terms of HE funding trends there had been specially earmarked allocations restructuring the institutional landscape through mergers and incorporations. There were infrastructural grants to improve the quality of teaching and learning in universities whilst block grants covering the running costs had not been keeping pace with inflation and had, in fact , decreased in real terms since 2000. Universities were forced to income from other sources such as tuition fees, contract research, endowments, commercialisation of intellectual property, sales of goods and services (short courses). On average, 40% of all income for universities was from Government subsidies (down from 49% in 2000), about 29% from student tuition fees and about 31% from private income (up from 27% in 2000)

In terms of the implications of the HE funding trends: it had increased their share of income arising from student fees and from private income; but student fee levels had contributed to placing HE out of reach for academically deserving but poor students, whilst private income sometimes jeopardised the core functions of learning/teaching, research and community service of universities. An appropriate balance had to be found between the three sources of university funding (1st, 2nd and 3rd streams). The student bursary and loan scheme could become instrumental in attaining this balance.

The Committee was given an overview of NSFAS funding to HE. In 2008, 182 497 was the number of awards granted to eligible students, which included 38 545 awarded to FET students, the National Institute for Higher Education and schools. The number of students in the FET colleges who had been assisted was 35 352. In 2008, 5189 students of the Funza Lushaka had benefited and 3602 students had benefited through the Department of Social Development scheme for social work training.

In terms of its major strengths, the NSFAS was advancing equity in terms of access to HE by ensuring that a larger number of poor students were able to access HE; the NSFAS was fast becoming a recognised disburser of financial aid for public as well as private funds by providing distribution and administrative capacity for loans and bursary funds; the NSFAS successfully implemented loan recovery and replenishment of NSFAS funds creating sustainability of the scheme through a loan repayment system that relied on tried and tested administrative and accountability procedures.

There were areas requiring improvement, however, such as the issue of delays in finalising institutional allocations; finalisation of loan agreements between students and NSFAS (too time consuming & process cumbersome); inadequacies in existing institutional allocation in terms of whether means test should be raced based or if there were other ways of determining need. The criteria for determining eligibility of students for support were outlined to the Committee in terms of the areas requiring improvement. Mr Eloff submitted that the means test compilation was inadequate - there were issues around determining an appropriate income value and Expected Family Contribution (EFC) values; there was need for improvement to the educational delivery mode; and the dilemma of choosing between higher support levels for fewer students, or lower support levels for more students.

There was need for improvement in the relationship between the bursary and loan component of applications. There was also a need to direct NSFAS support at priority fields of study. There was a further need to extend NSFAS support to not-for-profit HE providers. There was also a need to improve on the issue of non-loan paying students and its administrative and allocation practices by implementing greater e-based administrative platforms; increasing HE-NSFAS interactions to understand the challenges faced by the Financial Aid Offices in HE Institutions; increasing staff capacity in Financial Aid Offices (in terms of training on NSFAS operation and administrative processes); implementing a NSFAS media and public communication campaign. The matter of unclaimed NSFAS funds was another concern whilst in terms of NSFAS’ governance and management arrangements they felt that the board composition should include experience in university funding, student financial aid, broad student issues and administrative and financial management.

A big challenge for the post-secondary system was that there were a 2.8 million potential students (18- 24 age cohort) who were not studying, employed or were disabled (Centre for Higher Education Transformation CHET 2009). Of this 2.8 million, roughly 700 000 students with Grade 12 were not studying, employed or disabled (CHET 2009). 1 million of this 2.8 million had between Grades 10-12, and could go into the FET sector (CHET 2009). The biggest challenge was for South Africa to create the post-secondary education opportunities for these potential students. The implications were that they could not afford HE as they chose high cost unit (universities) and not low cost (FET colleges). The post-secondary schooling system was not able to produce graduates who were work-ready. This was a big challenge for the post secondary-system. As a result NSFAS was a transformation tool to promote equitable differentiation in terms of vocational and academic skills. NSFAS therefore had to expand its support to students in the FET college sector and had to play a role in the distribution of opportunities in an unequal society.

In concluding the presentation, Mr Eloff submitted that a well functioning and strengthened NSFAS was in the best interest of society (poor students, universities and government). The NSFAS loan scheme had broadened poor (but academically deserving) students’ access to Higher Education and was an important step in contributing to the creation of an equitable society. HESA affirmed its full support for the Review of NSFAS and would co-operate and assist the Review Committee in any way the Committee felt suitable.

Discussion
Dr W James (DA) queried the figures on PhDs which indicated growth in the number of PhDs. The PhD figures that he had been looking at in terms of bursaries awarded from 2005 to 2008 indicated stagnation and not growth. There were also some issues around more foreign students as opposed to South African students graduating with PhDs.

Mr Eloff responded that the figure represented a period of 8 years that is 2000 to 2008 inclusive. It was true however that the trend in the recent past indicated a stagnation in the number of PhDs. Across all universities there had been a stagnation with respect to both Masters and PhD students. All of the universities that were interested in this had been investigating what the reasons for that were. The reasons for this ranged from more and more students opting to enter the job market as result of job offers that were more lucrative than studying further as a result of the country's positive economic growth. The second possibility was that the career prospects for PhD graduates were not that lucrative and they were likely to earn less than in the private sector. Thirdly, it could be that the type of bursary award for Masters and PhD students failed to take into account the difficulty of working and studying at the same time and most students preferred to do that full-time. To be able to do that one had not only to look at the student's costs but also at his family's costs because often those students were married. Universities were realising that they should do a little bit more to give higher bursaries. It was true that there had been stagnation in the past two years and they were looking into that and they had strategies for that.

Dr James commented that in terms of the country's human resources development strategy there was a target set for 1700 PhDs by 2018. That date had now been revised to 2022. This was with respect to the field of science. There was a need to seriously revise these projections because if they were going to meet the Human Resources Development (HRD) goals then they needed to do something quite drastic.

Dr James commented that it was clear that there were students at universities who ought not to be there but should have enrolled in vocational training. What happened then was that university resources were used to deal with under-prepared students and those resources were often diverted from where they in fact should be. If there was a system whereby the students at universities were qualified to be there in terms of their skills then there would be a much better university system as a result.

Dr James remarked that the FET system had to expand rapidly to absorb those students who failed to qualify for university. He asked if the FET system had capacity to absorb so many students and what the resource requirements were in terms of paying for staff and so on.

Dr James asked if the threshold of R120 000 did not take into account certain material realities. There were white families who were in the same situation as black families in terms of being in the lower middle income level. There were some black families who certainly could afford to privately send their children to university. What they were looking at therefore was not a racial measure to determine financial need but a class one.

Professor Errol Tyobeka: Deputy Chairperson HESA, responded to the issue of class distinctions and race as a measure of poverty. He was not sure that the NSFAS could cover all the needs of a student in obtaining a tertiary qualification. Most student were first generation students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The race issue was not very critical since the bulk of students would be those from previously disadvantaged communities. It was not possible for NSFAS to cover everything. There was a high demand for bursaries and large numbers of students needed to be covered. If a small number were allocated full bursaries then a larger majority would suffer and this would result in protests. It was better to halve the bursaries to cover more people but as one did that one had to enable them to succeed. There was also need for encouraging community involvement.

Mr Ahmed Essop, Acting CEO, NSFAS, did not completely agree with Professor Tyobela on the issue of race as a proxy. When the NSFAS was established, race had been a proxy at the time in order to identify poor students as black. So the Department had simply used black without having to define what a poor student would be, knowing full well that this would not be adequate and that they did not have an understanding of the nuanced socio-economic factors that determined poverty. For instance the NSFAS did not apply to black students from other African countries and this had often resulted in some institutions receiving a larger allocation of the NSFAS than others because they had a large pool of black students who did not qualify for funding. Moving towards a better understanding of the socio-economic factors that determined access to NSFAS was a technical exercise in which the review committee was involved currently. This would help bring progress to the NSFAS. He argued that there was a need to move away from using race as a proxy of being poor. He was not aware, and stood corrected, if there was anything in the legislation that suggested that non-African or non-black students were not eligible for the NSFAS. The way in which the definition of what was black and what was poor at the time of the passing of the legislation was then interpreted in particular ways. In principle, however, there was nothing in the legislation that precluded poor students who were not black from receiving NSFAS funds.

Dr James asked what was stopping NSFAS from adjusting this threshold level and its requirements for provision of financial assistance. He was aware that there was presently a commission of inquiry. Was it necessary to have that since it appeared quite simple that the threshold was too low and had to be raised. If a class measure was required for making a determination then why could they not use that?

Mr Eloff responded that FET colleges had no capacity and there would be a need to give FET colleges some money for them to market themselves and to obtain human capacity through the intensive training of lecturers because of the need for more and better trained staff.

Ms N Vukuza (COPE) commented on the focus areas of HESA programmes, saying they were not supporting and underpinning the role that they were playing. Perhaps further engagement would have ensured that the Committee understood what they were doing through their programmes and what they wanted to achieve.

Ms Vukuza was curious to know how university mergers were performing. The Committee was concerned because there was a disconnect somewhere when one looked at it but obviously they could provide better insight in terms of how they were working and what was seen as their role going forward.

Professor Tyobeka, Deputy Chairperson (HESA), commented that the majority of merged institutions were in the fifth year of merging. Although there had been talk of mergers not working, such statements had to be supported by evidence. The mergers would be reviewed at a conference to evaluate their progress. In terms of infrastructural developments to accommodate changes, these had been delayed by funding. However he wanted to leave the Committee with a sense that merging was not a short-term process. It would probably take another five years for mergers to settle and generate benefits. He cautioned against thoughts of de-merging which he warned would throw the system into instability.

Ms Vukuza commented that there was an issue around students who got into the system and those who were not getting out of the system. This was a concern and she raised the concept of a tracker system for higher education. She asked why they were losing students in production and what was being done about this. If universities were centres of production and they were not producing, then what were they doing about the waste in between which was actually higher than the input cost because of a loss of future potential. If they were saying that education participated that highly in the economy and they were losing so much in the process of packaging and distribution what would happen then?

Ms Vukuza requested clarity on the black-listing of students who defaulted on their NSFAS loan repayments. She wanted to know whether the implications of black-listing students had been considered and if there were alternative rehabilitative measures in place to assist students with debt problems.

Ms F Mushwana (ANC) commented on the challenges facing HESA such as the graduation rates that were skewed in favor of whites and Indians. Although more Africans and colored persons gained access they did not graduate. She did not see how that would improve and asked what needed to be done. The Committee wanted to see an improvement and suggestions about what the Department felt had to be done.

Mr Eloff responded that the issue of the graduation rate was a difficult one. It was not easy to pinpoint reasons especially with the differing duration and structure of academic programmes, some of which were three year degree programmes, whilst others were four year degrees or one year post-graduate diploma programmes. Another problem was also the fact that most universities did not have foundation programmes. For those with foundation programmes, these were working very well as they allowed undergraduate students to complete their studies in four years as opposed to three years.

Ms Mushwana commented on the tried and tested administrative and accountability procedures. In terms of areas of improvement, there were still delays in the finalisation of loan agreements. It seemed that the administrative aspect required serious attention.

Ms Mushwana asked if they could agree that black-listing should be eradicated. She asked what could be done to ensure that those who found themselves blacklisted out of no fault of their own were removed from the black-list. Some of these students failed to secure employment after completing their studies whilst others failed to complete their studies and yet they still had to repay the loans.

Professor Duma Malaza, Chief Executive Officer, HESA, responded that the NSFAS Act authorised them to blacklist defaulters. However this was done after a careful process that ensured that students were blacklisted only after they could not be traced. There was also a process for de-listing students which was very simple and took no more than a few minutes.

Mr Essop added that students were only asked to pay after they graduated and they had obtained employment that generated a certain level of income. Debt re-arrangement plans were also possible between the NSFAS and students to negotiate for a longer period of repayment. It was not a punitive measure but one that ensured that people who could afford repaying their loans but were not willing to do so were compelled to pay back. There were large amounts of funds being recouped into the system as a result of this. It was therefore something that they should encourage - people should pay if they could.

Ms Mushwana expressed her concern about the time frames in which reports were given to the Committee. It was up to 2007 and this was August 2009. She wanted to know whether it was not possible that by March they could be provided with the data on enrollment since they still did not have statistics for 2008. This had to improve in future.

The Chairperson asked what the reasons were for the drop-outs and where the students who had dropped out ended up. Could they ask HESA to provide them a list of all the drop-outs per province and information about what they were doing at present. It was of no use having so many people in the system without seeing their actual graduation.

The Chairperson also wanted to know what happened to the graduates, he asked if there was a system to follow-up on graduates after they left university since there was a high rate of emigration by graduates who were lured to developed countries such as Australia and the UK by lucrative job opportunities. Therefore even among the 50% or so that had passed successfully through the system, one still had to know what had happened to them. As this involved the investment of taxpayers’ money into NSFAS, one needed to know whether they were servicing the field of medicine, for instance, and not foreign labour markets such as Canada which appeared to be what was happening currently.

Ms W Nelson (ANC) asked whether on the issue of the NSFAS bursaries, they were not too inadequate to cover all of the students costs such as transport and food and that this could be a factor in increasing the rate of drop-outs.

Mr S Makhubele (ANC) was interested in knowing about the kind of planning that would go into aligning the funding cycle with government's financial year in terms of the budget cycle to prevent delays in the disbursement of NSFAS to students especially during the registration period at the beginning of the year.

Mr Essop responded that he did not completely agree with Mr Eloff and his other colleagues on the issue of institutional allocations. The institutional allocations were done according to a formula as they were for the subsidy formula that government gave them. So by mid-December all institutions had to know what they were getting from Government both in terms of subsidies and their allocations for the NSFAS. Mr Essop submitted that information was not provided to NSFAS in a timely manner and that there were backlogs in the way that data flowed to the NSFAS.

Mr Makhubele suggested that they had to find ways of tapping into the potential of students in terms of post-secondary education.

Mr Eloff was concerned that learners' ability to read and write was declining. Children coming from matric were showing declining standards of numeracy and reading ability. This indicated that there were certain deficiencies in the schooling system.

Mr Makhubela asked a question on the drop-out rate. He wanted to know what would happen to those students who did not qualify for NSFAS when they had entered the institution.

Professor Rachel Gumbi, Executive Commissioner, HESA, responded to the issue of the drop-out rate. There was a need for education support systems to be made available for students. The division of students into tutorial groups to increase contact time with a smaller lecturer-student ratio and foundation programmes for students from previously disadvantaged backgrounds were some of the ways of providing that support. They were going to have to focus on key areas and responsibilities in education such as the provision of e-learning and the co-relation of theory and practical learning. A consultative process had been started and they wanted to include students in university councils to foster co-operation on issues of student welfare such as tuition fee increments. There was a debate currently underway on whether tuition fee increases should not be linked to the inflation rate. Student protests about tuition fee increases was one area that destabilised the Higher Education Institutions. There were special support systems in place in the form of merit bursary awards and financial support for needy students and various other bursaries provided by the private sector in different fields of study.

Professor Duma Malaza: CEO, HESA, responded that they were currently doing some research on the issue of tracing graduates after they had completed their studies and on the means test for determining a student's level of financial need. At the moment, the means test was driven by student information whereas it had to be driven by administrative information. The issues that were being debated about the means test included the consideration whether it had to be driven by cost concerns or equity concerns and how to reach an appropriate balance that would meet the needs of both costs and equity considerations.

Mr Essop submitted that although he was in an acting capacity and had only started working the previous week, he was familiar with NSFAS from working in the Department. If the threshold were to be increased to say R150 000, this would increase the pool of students who would be eligible for the NSFAS but they would still encounter the problem of insufficient resources. So in many ways, however they refined the NSFAS and whatever administrative problems they had that needed to be strengthened, the key issue in relation to both the issue of the threshold of R120 000 and the NSFAS bursary allocation by different universities was that they required more resources, be it from Treasury to the Department of Education, or whether as the Minister had been suggesting, they looked at the Skills Fund or partnerships with the private sector. Unless they brought in a significant amount of additional resources into the NSFAS, the problem would not go away. The problem was not a technical one about the running of the NSFAS but was about the amount of funds available to the NSFAS.

Mr Makhubela asked, with respect to fee increases and student protests and the resulting instability in institutions, to what extent could they ensure that there was no disruption to learning.

The Chairperson commented that there had to be a uniform methodology on granting financial assistance for the different universities. There appeared to be discrepancies when it came to how the various institutions granted financial aid to their students. Some students were granted full bursaries at certain institutions whilst others in similar circumstances would not be granted full bursaries at other institutions. He was concerned about the contradiction that arose from the conclusion that there were institutions with better capacity that attracted student who could afford to pay their own tuition viz-a-vis institutions with lesser capacity and servicing the poorest of the poor but without the capacity of providing them with full support.

The Chairperson commented on the financial aid offices at HE institutions. He asked if there was a document analysing their capacity in terms of a very structured relationship to see if they were on par with each other.

Ms Kirti Menon, Chief Director: Department of Higher Education, commented that at the beginning of 2009 and the previous year, the Department had begun a process of monitoring the uptake of universities in terms of the facilities for advance payments. However one of the findings that they had made this year was that several institutions had not utilised this. They were therefore trying to strengthen their monitoring office, working with both NSFAS as well as institutions and requesting information.
She continued that the same applied this year with fee increases where last year funds were allocated to institutions on the basis of inflation. They had asked the institutions to indicate in advance what the fee increases would be so that they could in a sense be more prepared to deal with the registration issues that surface at the beginning of every year.

She said that the NSFAS Review Committee had been working since July and had met several times already. Some of the key challenges, as set out in the terms of reference, were: the definition of poverty; the threshold levels that could be set and thresholds in terms of the resources that were currently available and the amount of further resources that had to be sourced from Treasury in order to deal with this; the affordability in terms of the sector and what was the ideal package provided by NSFAS to students and its relation to meeting their needs as well as to ensuring academic success (bearing in mind that there could be other factors that could result in drop-outs).
The current model of NSFAS with respect to institutional allocation had also been considered by the Review Committee and there was a debate whether money should follow the institution or if money should follow the student. So these were some of the issues which would of course require quite sophisticated modeling so that one could begin projecting needs for the next 5-10 years looking at it far more broadly than just higher education and taking into account the equity sector. They were also looking at the current model which was a decentralised model. Funds were allocated to the institution and then allocated to the student from there. They were looking at the efficiency of this as well as whether there were other support mechanisms that should be in place for students who required funds. Hopefully a far more substantial report could be made available to the Committee later on during the year on the progress they were making on these issues.

Mr Makhubela asked if it was possible for NSFAS to take care of all of the students needs through additional cash disbursements, for example, since one of the possible reasons for drop-outs could be inadequate bursaries.

Ms Linda Nhlumayo Chief Operations Officer, NSFAS, responded that cash payments to students were made in certain instances as approved by the Board although as a general practice this was not encouraged. This was to address instances where the university could not provide a service internally. However there were conditions around that process, for example, the university could make certain disbursements of the loan and bursary amounts for certain things like special equipment for students with disabilities and off-campus accommodation.

The Chairperson stated in conclusion that it was quite clear that there was a lack of synergy with all the role players in terms of a coherent co-operative structure. There was a problem of instability within the Department as indicated by people being appointed in an acting capacity. The Committee had raised issues in the context of additional funding for the NSFAS - linked to their discussions on drop-out rates. The meeting had also concluded that the quality of education in South African schools was in dire stress and that there was a need to explore whether graduates were in the service of South Africa or whether they were being lost to foreign labour markets in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia for instance. The meeting had also concluded that students would perform better if there was adequate support and that this would improve the quality of the throughput in institutions.

Masakh' Isizwe Bursary Programme briefing
Mr Sidney Luckett, Director of Masakh' Isizwe Centre of Excellence submitted that the Western Cape Province Department of Transport and Public Works had established the Masakh' iSizwe (Let's Build the Nation) Centre of Excellence at the beginning of 2006 for study towards a degree or diploma in the transport, engineering and built environment fields at HE Institutions in the Western Cape. The core values of the programme were to develop a cadre of “nation builders” committed to economic development, social justice, and environmental sustainability

The vision of the Centre was to make available to the province, the country and the continent of Africa, cohorts of professionals in engineering and built environment fields critical for the growth of the economy. These professionals would be characterised by excellence in learning measured by formal academic results as well as a commitment to ‘lifelong learning’; citizenship through developing an ethos of non racialism, social justice and environmental awareness; and, service through learners participating in development of under-resourced communities.

The Committee was provided with statistics of the bursaries awarded by the Centre between 2006 and 2009:
2006 – 127 bursaries, 34 % women
2007 – 213 bursaries, 45% women
2008 – 296 bursaries, 41% women
2009 – 299 bursaries, 42% women
The presentation also provided details of the Centre's activities pertaining to learner enrichment and life skills development through events such as leadership wilderness camps. Mr Luckett also highlighted the undertaking of voluntary work by students at schools as Maths tutors in nine schools. Although the students were not experienced teachers, this kind of initiative provided motivation to learners to take up studies in the engineering field by providing them with role models who would give them inspiration. The Committee was also informed of the Centre's achievements in terms of student throughput rates, the bursary collaboration venture and employment uptake in terms of experiential learning and graduate professional development. The Committee was shown the employment figures for graduates which indicated that a greater proportion of them were absorbed into the Department whilst a significant number were employed by local municipalities and the Centre's industry partners. The Centre had also been the recipient of a number of achievement awards such as the Premier’s Service Excellence Award.

Discussion
The Committee raised essentially the same HRD concerns on throughput rates and brain drain as before. Members raised questions about the selection criteria for the bursary and whether this sufficiently gave opportunities to students from rural communities.
Mr Luckett explained that the selection process was facilitated by an internship programme and recommendations from different institutions about students who could be eligible for the award. The other consideration was that the bursary could not be awarded for any other purposes save for engineering qualifications. This restricted its scope and they currently had a shortage of female applicants to the programme.

Ms Mushwana (ANC) wanted to know why the programme appeared to have a regional bias in terms of operating with institutions in the Western Cape despite the vision to develop a cadre of “nation builders” although ostensibly it would be benefiting from national funds.
Mr Luckett responded that the Centre did not have capacity to operate in all of the country's provinces but would do so given funding. It also carried out community projects and professional development initiatives in a number of the country's provinces and not just the Western Cape.
Dr W James (DA) Asked why this kind of initiative had not benefited communities such as Khayelitsha were there was inadequate sanitation.

Mr Luckett responded that it was indeed surprising that engineering talent had not been utilised to address such community problems but pointed out that this was the focus of the Centre in terms of their vision as nation builders.
[The meeting commenced with the raising of an objection by Mr W James (DA) that members were not honoring the commitment to start meetings on time. This objection was noted by the Chairperson.]

The meeting was adjourned.