Over 600 000 Eligible Students Provisionally Funded For 2025: Nsfas

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme NSFAS says it has provisionally funded more than 600,000 eligible students at various universities for the 2025 academic year. More than 200,000 students have been fully funded.

The scheme was giving an update on the status of NSFAS applications for this year before the Select Committee on Education, Sciences and Creative Industries in Parliament.

NSFAS Acting CEO, Waseem Carrim says there are few applications on review. He says the provisional figure includes applications that are on appeal whereby students arent happy with the rejection made on their applications for funding.

"We have very few applications that are still on review, just 22. We do still have some which are on the verification status, which we are working hard to be able to clear. Some are still being assessed financially and with academic eligibility. The majority you will see are on provisionally funded status 660,000 of them are there. We have about 97,000 rejected applications. We have about 70,000 that are on appeal. Registration data comes almost on a daily basis from the universities. We do have a deadline of the 31 st of March for the registration data," explains Carrim.

The fund says about 243,000 eligible students have been fully funded through their institutions.