As the current academic year draws to a close, there will soon be a surge of students looking for tertiary education, and in need of government financial aid. The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is set to face a huge number of applications as university end-of-year exams draw near and students look to attend courses next year. The next few weeks will be busy for students as the Minister of Higher Education announces NSFAS applications for 2023.

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), a division of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), has made preparations to ensure that the scheme’s funding can be allocated to tertiary students for the 2023 academic year.

Today, 27th September 2022, Blade Nzimande, the Higher Education Minister will officially announce the opening of 2023 NSFAS applications at 16:00 .

The minister will provide an update on the bursary program’s status, including the application procedure and NSFAS’s support. This is a crucial time for bursary students, who have been struggling to make ends meet since the crisis first arose. We expect that the Minister of Higher Education will be able to explain exactly what happened over the past few months, as well as how he plans to improve the system going forward.

According to NSFAS, there are presently 691,432 students for the 2022 academic year, with 462,983 being female and 227,072 being male students.

Meanwhile, the Department of Higher Education and Training provided R47,3 billion to NSFAS for the 2022 academic year, covering both TVET colleges and public universities.

NSFAS is a financial aid scheme for students to access tertiary education, enabling them to enroll at public higher education institutions and TVET colleges. This funding gives access to over 200 000 additional students each year