Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande On NSFAS and 2023 Admission
In order to ensure that the children of the working class and the poor are supported to pursue their post graduate studies, the NRF will prioritise all NSFAS funded undergraduate students who meet the criteria for admission to pursue their postgraduate studies.
The issue of the missing middle funding is being finalized within the Comprehensive Funding Model process. Working within the policy framework, we will avail loans and bursaries and direct these efforts toward students located within the scarce skills categories.
We appeal to institutions to register these students and allow administrative processes between NSFAS and the institutions to continue.
The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has agreed with all our institutions to allow all confirmed NSFAS funded students to register for the 2023 academic year. This arrangement also applies to all students who qualify under the Historic Debt Funds & Close Out Report.
The overall total enrolments within the public university sector for the 2023 academic year is projected to provide 1 112 439 spaces. This is an addition of 41 545 spaces from the 1 070 894 in the 2022 academic year. This shows that our university sector is steadily growing.
We acknowledge the fact that this figure is still substantially lower for us to attain the 2,5 million students’ enrolment plan in TVET colleges by 2030 as projected by the NDP. We are however working hard with our plans to ensure that we accelerate the growth of our TVET sector.
Our TVET colleges planned headcount enrolment for 2023 is 497 032 for the ministerial approved programmes with additional 59 383 enrolment for programmes that are funded through other sources, thus bringing the total planned TVET enrolment for the academic year 2023 to 556 415.
