How to pay for a bootcamp in Norway
There is no Norwegian scheme you can apply to as a private individual to have a course like ours paid for. What Norway has instead is a tax rule that is unusually generous, and it reverses its condition depending on whether your job is continuing or ending. That one fact decides most of this page, so start with which of the two describes you.
The same money is tax-free under opposite conditions, and the date decides which
Norwegian tax law lets an employer fund education tax-free, and the condition attached to it depends on when the funding is agreed. While you are in the job, the competence has to be usable in your current or future work at that employer, so the route is built for getting better at what you do or moving somewhere else inside the company. Funded in connection with the employment ending, the condition turns around: the education has to qualify you for work with your next employer, which is what makes a full change of field the easy case rather than the hard one. Nothing else on this page moves that much. The remaining routes support you rather than pay the fee: your benefit covers living costs while you study, and a union fund or a private foundation takes a piece off the invoice. Three of the pages linked below are in Norwegian, because the schemes they describe are administered in Norwegian.
If you are employed, ask your employer, because this is the route with the fewest conditions on it. Your employer can cover the full fee tax-free for you and deduct it as an ordinary business expense, with no ceiling on teaching costs, no approval scheme to enter and nobody outside the company deciding. The test is whether the skills are usable in your current or future work at that employer, which is broader than most people assume. Employer-paid education, and how to ask
If your job is ending, the severance agreement is the most valuable document you will sign this year. Education funded in connection with the employment ending is tax-free up to 1.5 G, roughly NOK 204,800 today, which sits above the price of everything we run. The condition points at your next employer rather than your last one, so retraining into a different field is exactly what it is for. It has to be written into the sluttavtale before you sign. Education in your severance package
If you are a jobseeker on dagpenger, you can keep the benefit while you study rather than have the fee paid. That is 62.4% of your previous income, in practice between NOK 15,000 and 45,000 a month, and it is what makes three months of full-time study possible at all. Apply before the course starts, not after. Keeping your dagpenger while you study
If you are in a union, your fund has money in it that members routinely never ask for. LO's education fund pays up to NOK 13,500 a school year and Fagforbundet's up to NOK 15,000, reimbursed to you against documented costs, and most other Norwegian unions run something of their own. It is a piece of the fee rather than the whole of it, and it stacks with everything above. Union and LO education funds
And there are over 2,000 private foundations handing out education money in Norway with almost no conditions on the school. Grants are typically NOK 5,000 to 30,000, so this is the route that costs you application evenings rather than negotiation, and the one that needs neither an employer nor a caseworker. Private foundations and funds
Frequently asked questions
I am employed and want to change field entirely. Can my employer still pay?
Only if the new field is somewhere you could work at that employer, because the exemption is written around competence for your current or future work there. A move from support into security, or from marketing into front-end, usually fits; training aimed squarely at leaving does not. That is worth being honest about early rather than discovering it in an assessment. If leaving is the plan and the job is ending anyway, the severance route is built for exactly your case and its condition points the other way.
My role is being made redundant. What should I actually ask for?
Ask for the education to be funded as part of the severance agreement, named and priced, before you sign anything. Up to 1.5 G is tax-free that way, which is roughly NOK 204,800 and more than any of our programmes cost, and the condition is that the training qualifies you for work with another employer. Ask for it as a written line in the sluttavtale rather than as a promise, and remember that taking the same amount as cash turns it into taxable salary.
Will NAV pay for the course if I am unemployed?
Not the fee. The scheme where NAV buys a course place is limited to training delivered in Norway by a provider operating here, so that route is closed to an online course from abroad whatever the case for it. What is open is keeping your dagpenger while you study, which is a separate scheme with its own conditions: age 25 and over for courses, normally twelve weeks on benefit first, and an application in before the course starts. That covers your living costs while you fund the fee another way.
Can I use more than one of these at the same time?
Yes, and for a jobseeker that is usually the plan rather than the exception. Keeping your benefit deals with your income, a union fund and a foundation grant each take a piece off the fee, and none of them is a substitute for the others. The one rule to respect is that a fund will not reimburse an expense somebody else has already covered, so declare what you have applied for. Employees can combine employer funding with a union stipend on whatever share of the fee they paid themselves.
Does it matter that Code Labs Academy is a German provider teaching online?
Not for any of the routes in the first section. The employer exemption attaches to the purpose of the education rather than to the school, foreign education is explicitly covered, and the union funds and private foundations look at your documented costs rather than at a register. Where the question does decide the answer is the scheme in which NAV purchases a course place, which is built around training delivered in Norway. That is why it sits in the section above rather than in the first one.
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