The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has provided funds to thousands of students from poor and working-class families, so they get an opportunity to study at one of South Africa’s 26 public universities or 50 technical and vocational education and training colleges (TVET colleges).

In 2023 alone, more than 760,000 people received NSFAS funding, 500,000 of them women. NSFAS paid out R44.6-billion in funds that year, most of it to university students.

Nearly half (47%) of the just over a million students enrolled at public universities in 2023 were receiving NSFAS funds, according to Department of Higher Education and Training statistics.

The average bursary for a university student was R73,830, compared with R28,188 for TVET college students.

Before 2018, NSFAS funding was mostly loans. But in December 2017, then president Jacob Zuma announced that the government would subsidise higher education for students from households with annual incomes of up to R350,000. Since 2018, funding has been in the form of bursaries.