ECTS Definition

ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) is an important element of the Bologna process, meant to help international students make the most of their study abroad experience. Initially, the ECTS was directed towards Erasmus students, as a tool for acknowledging courses and programmes they studied while abroad.
The ECTS credit system makes degree programmes and student performance more transparent and comparable all across European Union countries. ECTS replaced or complemented the different local (national) standards within Europe.

The top benefits of ECTS for students include:

You can study a Bachelor in an EU-country and a Master in another EU-country, as if you studied both in the same country;
Find work in any EU country you want, as your studies
will be easily recognised;
If taking a joint-degree, studying a semester abroad, or an Erasmus study experience, it will be easy for your home university to keep track of the study hours, with the help of ‘credit transfers’;
Simplified academic paperwork;
Easier to estimate the complexity of a study class, seminar, internship, thesis, etc., based on the number of credits it offers upon completion;
Less differentiation between local and international students in universities.
Even if you drop out of a programme, ECTS credits help you prove your academic achievements, so you don't have to take the same courses all over again.
Your degree will have the same number of credits, no matter what academic discipline you pursue.

ECTS Grading

Besides the ECTS-credits, the European Commission defined an ECTS grading system, as well. Since there are nearly as many different grading systems as countries, its aim is to make grades more comparable to each other.
The ECTS grading system is not replacing the local grading systems, but it’s meant to be a supplement to local grades, for example, on a transcript of records.
Similar to the American grading scale, the ECTS is based on the class percentile. That means that the grade shows how a student performed compared to the other students in the same class.
Before the evaluation, the results are divided into two subgroups: pass and fail. Therefore, the results are independent of the students who failed a course. The grading system is defined as follows:

A: Best 10%
B: Next 25%
C: Next 30%
D: Next 25%
E: Next 10%
FX: Fail (almost passing)
F: Fail

Note: the grades A, B, C, D and E are for the success group

This distribution is a discrete distribution on 5 categories, so it can hardly be called a gaussian distribution. However, the shape is gaussian-like and it is easy to see that the European Union got the idea from the Gaussian distribution. In a very perfect world, the transformation is the same in all countries and for all tests. For example:
50–60%=E, 60–70%=D, 70–80%=C, 80–90%=B, and 90–100%=A - and then the grades will approximately have a normal distribution with mean 75% and standard deviation 11.4%.

ECTS Credits

By completing a course, seminar, module etc., you get awarded ECTS-credit points. Every ECTS credit point represents the amount of workload you accomplished in that period of time.

Some examples of ECTS credits assigned per degree type are:

1 year of studies - 60 ECTS-credits;
3-year Bachelor’s programme - 180 ECTS-credits;
4-year Bachelor’s programme - 240 ECTS-credits;
2-year Master’s programme - 120 ECTS-credits.

Depending on the country, one ECTS credit point can equal on average between 25 and 30 workload hours.

The ECTS of 25-27 workload hours is the most suitable to shift smoothly from the old system.

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