Skilled workers may receive an extra loan from Lånekassen
Why am I receiving this information?
If you have received an e-mail containing information about further education, you have been selected as one of 62,000 people who are invited to participate in a pilot project run by the Directorate for higher education and skills. The project will examine whether finances and information about study options and career guidance influence skilled workers’ further education choices. You are therefore receiving an offer of a loan that can be converted to a grant.
Statistics Norway (SSB) has selected skilled workers based on education statistics. The outcomes of the project will be evaluated by researchers from FAFO and the Frisch Centre. You may be contacted by the researchers at a later date even if you do not start further education now. If you have any questions about the pilot project or its implementation, please refer to the Norwegian Institute for Adult Learning’s web pages.
What could I receive from Lånekassen?
This support scheme works in such a way that you can get a loan which may be converted to a grant if you pass your examination. The loan is up to NOK 25,000 per semester in the next academic year and will be in addition to ordinary support from Lånekassen. You can choose to apply for ordinary support as well as the additional support. You can do this using the application for support.
How much you can receive depends on how long your course takes, i.e. whether it spans the full academic year (August - June) or less and how high a study load you have. If you study part-time, the loan will be proportionately reduced in relation to your part-time percentage. This means that if, for example, your study percentage is 50 percent, you can receive a maximum of 50 percent of the support.
The loan cannot be converted to a parental grant if you have children.
If you are invited to participate in the project for the 2022-2023 academic year, you will be offered the loan for this academic year only and not any subsequent years. The loan is therefore available only for one year. Nevertheless, you can still apply for ordinary support after the end of the 2022-2023 academic year if you start courses that span multiple years.
What is required to receive the loan?
In order to be eligible for the loan, you need to be studying vocational upper secondary education, vocational college education, university or university college education in Norway during the 2022-2023 academic year. The study programme must be approved for support from Lånekassen and you must submit an application for support.
You must pass your examination to convert the loan to a grant. If you pass only parts of your studies, a smaller proportion of the loan will be converted. The deadline for passing your studies is up to four years into the future.
You must meet the general rules to be eligible for support from Lånekassen in order to receive both ordinary support and additional support under this pilot scheme. This means, among other things, that you cannot be more than one year behind with previous studies and that you cannot have defaulted on previous student loans.