The NRF Freestanding, Innovation and Scarce Skills Development Fund for Masters and Doctoral scholarships are aimed at increasing the throughput rates of Masters and Doctoral students at public higher education institutions. Consideration will be given to ensuring the need to strengthen research capacity in scarce skills, priority skills and knowledge fields as well as to accelerate the demographic transformation of the next generation of researchers. Allocation of funding will be governed by the annual budget availability.
The Innovation Bursary Scheme which also includes priority research areas, supports students who wish to pursue their postgraduate studies. The percentage of supported students will be 80% from the Science, Engineering and Technology disciplines and 20% from the Social Sciences and Humanities.