The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has officially opened the 2025 application process. This is for those students who require financial support for their full-time academic studies from the 2025 year onwards.

Higher Education and Training Minister, Dr Nobuhle Nkabane, launched the opening of the application process during a media briefing held in Pretoria on Friday.

NSFAS applications are now open and will close on 15 December 2024.

Nkabane said since its inception, NSFAS has supported more than five million beneficiaries, producing hundreds of thousands of skilled professionals, especially from within the poor and working-class sections of society.

"Those are the motivating forces that must be mobilised to contribute to the ongoing transformation of our country. The social transformation entails changing the material conditions of all South Africans for the better and education plays a vital role in ensuring that this becomes a reality," Nkabane said.

NSFAS has been an instrumental vehicle in making sure that the government produces the necessary labour force for a capable state.

In this year alone the NSFAS bursary scheme is supporting about 1.2 million students, with the number anticipated to grow in 2025.

NSFAS supports qualifying students who are studying at public universities or TVET Colleges across South Africa. The scheme covers the costs for tuition fees, accommodation fees, transport fees, and also certain living allowances (all dependent on the student and their requirements.)

“This demonstrates the role that the scheme has played in trying to change the structural colonial apartheid system that we have inherited, whose legacy persists even in the 30 years of democracy".

"NSFAS is the only tool we have at our disposal for the total liberation of children of historically oppressed people.

"As of 2024, we have also decided to introduce measures to support students who are currently not supported by the NSFAS bursary and funding policy".

"We successfully did this through the implementation of the first phase of the Comprehensive Student Funding Model, which ensures that the missing middle students access financial support from the government in the form of a loan from NSFAS to pursue their studies," Nkabane said.
Story from SAnews.gov.za

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