**6. Conclusion**

With the new political dispensation, the government was under pressure to enable more students from poorer communities to get access to higher education in South Africa. Because government appropriations decreased in real per capita terms and higher education costs increased steeply, HEIs had to increase their tuition fees by more than the inflation rate to be able to "balance their books". While racial criteria fell away after 1994 (although a lot of things already started to change before 1994), high fees at HEIs introduced a new economic barrier to a large percentage of students from poor communities.

The NSFAS began operating in 1995 to change the racially skewed composition of the student population in South Africa by providing funds for disadvantaged but deserving students. Over the period 1995 to 2020, NSFAS funded on average 198,697 university students per annum and spent R144.6 billion in total (while on average an additional 173,439 TVET students were supported financially through NSFAS since 2007 and R28.1 billion paid out). Especially since 2015 government has made a serious effort to make higher education more affordable to the poor by spending a much larger portion of their higher education budget on NSFAS than on state appropriations (subsidies).

NSFAS played no small role in the way the racial composition of the student population changed over time. In 1994 only 50.4% of students in higher education were black and 37.5% were white. By 2020, black students represented 79.4% of the total number of students at public universities, while the *non-white* component of the total number of students increased to 89.1%. Although NSFAS is not the sole contributor to this phenomenon, the scheme has played an instrumental role. For example, in 1994 NSFAS funded only 7.6% of university students, but this figure increased to more than 46% of the students in 2020.

The scheme undoubtedly contributed positively to making higher education more accessible and affordable to the poor. Furthermore, NSFAS students perform better than non-NSFAS students. A larger proportion of them obtains qualifications while a smaller share of them dropped out of the higher education system without qualifications, compared to the non-NSFAS students. NSFAS largely serves students from poorer backgrounds who are usually first-generation university students. Therefore, the success of these students in progressing through the higher education system is remarkable. Because almost all current NSFAS awards are bursaries the progress of NSFAS students will have to be closely monitored in the future to ensure that the money is still spent on successful students (that progress successfully through the system).

*Perspective Chapter: The Role NSFAS has Played to Facilitate Poor Students in South Africa DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109664*
