The Faculty's Excellence in Law Scholarship Fund has been growing for 25 years. Over more than two decades, this fund has supported hundreds of South African students from historical disadvantage in covering their tuition fees.
Currently, the Faculty's Excellence in Law Scholarship fund invests about R2.5million each year on tuition support for undergraduate and postgraduate study. From this fund, we are able to provide tuition scholarships to LLB students, up to R70 000 per annum; to Master's students, in the order of R60 000 per annum; and to PhD students, R90 000 per annum. Annual fee increases, however, will continue to outpace the amounts we are able to provide. A year of LLB fees in 2025 is between R76 000 and R92 000, depending on year of study. Accommodation can cost upwards of R80 000.
Even with the incredible support we have from our current donors and friends, we simply are not able to provide support at the level required, and many of our students continue to face financial exclusion due to fee debt.
With your help, we can continue to build each year on what we are able to offer by way of tuition scholarships!
While South Africa’s National Student Financial Assistance Scheme (NSFAS) began funding full-cost tuition in 2018 for the poorest students, this left a large group of LLB students who did not qualify for NSFAS, but who nevertheless had a pressing need for financial support. In addition, the NSFAS scheme withdrew all funding support for graduate LLB students (ie. those LLB students with an undergraduate degree), and NSFAS now only funds the 4-year LLB degree.
Our Scholarship programme, though, is not just for our LLB students. With excellence in Faculty expertise and facilities, we attract postgraduate students from across the world. UCT Law’s School for Advanced Legal Studies has become a destination hub for postgraduate studies in Law – for coursework programmes and degrees by research.
Postgraduate studies are underfunded in South Africa, with very little funding available for Masters students enrolled in coursework programmes. Research degrees in Law are similarly underfunded. It is critical that we are able to attract top students into these postgraduate programmes as our key route to building research expertise amongst young legal scholars, and to contributing to developing the field of Law and of legal practice.
With your support we can do better. And more students can achieve their professional dream at UCT Law! Your support for our Excellence in Law Scholarship Fund can ensure that our eager law students are able to qualify with their LLB and and contribute professionally to the growth of the field of Law at a national and global level.
