VitalStats 2023 is the latest in a series of annual publications of the Council on Higher Education (CHE) that present vital statistics on the higher education sector. The inaugural publication in this series was published in 2012. As with earlier issues in the series, this publication presents audited datasets on public higher education in a visual, user-friendly format. The primary source of datasets for the publication is the Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS) held by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), with additional data drawn from other organisations, including Statistics South Africa (Stats-SA) and the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).