The ECTS system (European Credit Transfer System) is the European System of Transfer and Accumulation of Credit Units, used in the European Higher Education Area and concerning all countries participating in the Bologna Process. It was developed within the framework of the ERASMUS program (European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) and began to be implemented from the academic year 1992-93 between a member country of the European Union and any other country belonging to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) to enable students to attend part of their studies at other universities abroad.
Its purpose is to strengthen and facilitate the processes of academic recognition between the cooperating Institutions of Europe. It is based on transparency of learning outcomes (ie what students are expected to learn, understand and be able to do) and learning processes. The use of ECTS, in combination with the frameworks of study titles, based on learning outcomes, makes the programs and study titles more transparent and facilitates their recognition as well as the mobility of students (e.g. in the context of Erasmus+ programs ). In particular, the university of origin recognizes the credit units received by the students from the partner institutions for the courses they attended there, so that the units of the courses received by the students abroad replace the units that would be granted by the University of origin in an equivalent period of study.
ECTS express the workload required on average by students to achieve the expected learning outcomes. Workload corresponds to the time estimated that students typically need to spend to complete all learning activities (such as attending lectures, seminars, assignments, internships, independent study and exams), required to achieve the expected learning outcomes.
The ECTS system is a numerical value (between 1 and 60), assigned to each course to express the workload required by the student to complete a course, workshop, seminar, internship, etc. A full academic year of study is equivalent to 60 ECTS . Therefore, a full semester corresponds to 30 ECTS.
Each four-year undergraduate study program must include at least 240 credits (ECTS), while each five-year undergraduate study program must include at least 300 credits (ECTS).
The ECTS system also includes the ECTS grading, which indicates the ranking of a student’s grade. The student who has received a scholarship from the I.K.Y. (Greek Scholarship Foundation) as an Erasmus student, in addition to the local grade of the European University where he attended his courses, he must provide an official document showing the title of the course, the grade there, the number of ECTS and the ECTS grading.
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