ECTS - General Information
ECTS and cross-border ERASMUS student mobility
ECTS, the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System, was developed in order to provide common procedures to guarantee academic recognition of studies abroad. It provides a way of measuring and comparing learning achievements and transferring them
from one institution to another. This is achieved by using a common ECTS credit unit and a common ECTS grading scale.
ECTS also improves access to information about foreign curricula. ECTS is based on the principle of mutual trust and confidence between the institutions of higher education that participate in the ECTS-system.
ECTS credits
These are values that are allocated to course units to describe the student workload that is required to complete them. The credits reflect the quantity of work each course requires in relation to the total quantity of work required to complete a full year of academic study at an institution: lectures, practical work, seminars, etc.
Sixty (60) ECTS credits represent the workload of one academic year of study.
All course units offered in the departments and faculties of our institution have been allocated credits, which are completely in line with the ECTS credit allocation procedure and value scale.
In other words: 1 VUB credit (‘studiepunt’=’study point’) = 1 ECTS credit
For more detailed information about ECTS, and for an extended list of higher education institutions participating in ECTS, you can visit the official website.
ECTS grading scale
Examination and assessment results are usually expressed in grades. However, many different types of grading systems exist in Europe. To help institutions translate the grades awarded by host institutions to ECTS students, the ECTS grading scale has been developed in order to provide a common currency to measure the quality of student achievement. It is important to note that the ECTS grading scale is not meant to replace the local grade, but to be used optionally and additionally in order to effectively ‘translate’ and ‘transcript’ a grade from one institution to another.
For more detailed information on ECTS, and for an extended list of higher education institutions participating in ECTS, you can visit the official website.