Conversion of basic support
Up to 40 percent of the basic support you receive can be converted to a grant if you meet the conditions.
You must be living away from home
Only those living away from home may have loans converted to grants. When you apply for loans and grants, you must specify whether or not you live with your parents. Customers who are living away from home are awarded conversion loans that can later be converted to grants.
The conversion loan amounts to 40 percent of the basic support, which is the portion of study support given to “everyone”. You can check whether you have been allocated a conversion loan in the decision letter you received after applying for loans and grants.
Who is considered to be living away from home?
You are considered to be living away from home as long as you do not live in the same house as your parents during the period in which you receive loans and grants from Lånekassen.
If you live in the same house as your parents, you could still be considered to be living away from home if you live in “independent and clearly separate accommodation in the same house as the parents, and the applicant’s accommodation is registered with a separate housing unit number or equivalent in the Norwegian National Registry or land register.” By independent accommodation, we mean accommodation that has independent housing functions such as kitchen and bathroom.
You will also be considered to be living away from home if you are married or you have children.
Your income and assets must fall below the limits
Your income and assets must fall below the limits to be eligible for full conversion of basic support to grants. The conversion loan (proportion of the basic support that can be converted to grants) will not be converted to a grant if you are above the limits.
Please note that we verify income and assets each calendar year as the tax return from which we collect the information applies to the calendar year and not the academic year (autumn term - spring term).
Read more about the applicable limits.
The size of the reduction will depend on how far above the limit you are. You will not lose the entire conversion loan if your income is only slightly above the limit, in this case it will be gradually reduced.
In order to find out how much your grant will be reduced by, you can use this formula: Income above income limit x 5 percent x Number of months of support = Reduction.
What income and assets does Lånekassen use for means testing?
When we means-test your support against your income, we will look at your personal and capital income. This consists of
- all taxable earned income (including holiday pay)
- all taxable social security and pension benefits
- all capital income
We will disregard any financial support you or your children receive.
When it comes to assets, we will use the net assets specified in your tax return for the year in which you received support.
Net assets are the value of what you own, minus your total debt (for example, the value of your home and bank deposits, minus what you owe Lånekassen and what you owe on your mortgage).
Capital income includes interest on bank deposits, rental income or income from the sale of shares. Interest income from the home savings schemes for young people (BSU) is not included. We use gross capital income in checking your income, not net. This means, for example, that we do not take into account any expenses you might have with renting losses or losses when selling shares.
Income and assets we disregard
We do not include interest income from home savings schemes for young people (BSU). However, BSU savings that form part of your assets are included when assessing eligibility based on assets.
We also disregard a children's assets and any returns generated from those assets if they are managed by the county governor (Statsforvalteren), as well as assets arising as a result of having a national insurance-funded vehicle.
The practice for means testing in relation to personal injury compensation has changed. In addition to excluding the compensation itself from your assets, a calculated return relating to future loss will also be disregarded. Ths return must be calculated using the discount rate applied when the compensation was assessed. Any other return on the compensation amount will be included in then means test in then usual way. You must provide documentation both for the amount of compensation paid and for the discount rate that was applied.
See the Ministry of Education and Research's guidance (norwegian only) on means testing grants against returns from personal injury compensation payments, including an example of how the return should be calculated.
As of June 2025, the practice concerning the term "critical illness" has changed. From now on, there is no longer a requirement for documentation that the compensation and insurance payment applies to an illness that is on the insurance companies' lists of critical/serious illnesses. Critical illness will be understood as a designation of illnesses that give rise to the right to insurance payment.
If you have such a compensation or insurance payment that causes your assets this year to exceed the limits, you must notify Lånekassen. However, this does not automatically mean that a new assessment of your assets will lead to an increased grant, since we also assess personal income and/or social security. It is also possible that your assets are too high even if the insurance payment has been deducted.
Interest income from the home savings schemes for young people (BSU) is not generally included in the verification, but if your income or assets are too high as a result of any of the aforementioned situations, you need to let us know as we do not receive this information from the Norwegian tax administration. We can re-assess your income and assets if you submit documentation.
You must complete your studies
After verifying your income and assets, we will check whether you have completed your studies. In order for the entire conversion loan to be converted to grants, you must complete the proportion of studies for which you received loans and grants. For example, if you received support for full-time studies, you must have completed at least 60 study credits to be eligible for full conversion. If you complete fewer credits than what you have received support for, a correspondingly smaller loan will be converted to a grant.
We convert loans to grants at the same time as checking income and you will also receive a conversion for the same period for which we verified income. This means that the conversion will apply to the full calendar year and not each academic year (autumn-spring). For example, loans are converted to grants for all of 2025 in 2026.
Conversions are made each year when we verify income. The exception is students abroad, whose support is converted after they have submitted qualifications upon completion of studies. Students in Norway or exchange students do not need to submit anything.