ECTS Course Catalogues

International Relations Office - Student Mobility
Via Giulio Alberoni, 7 00198 Rome - Italy
Tel. 0039-06-85225.722 Fax: 0039-06-86506505 E-mail: relint@luiss.it

The European Community promotes inter-university co-operation as a means of improving the quality of education to the benefit of students and higher education institutions alike. Student mobility constitutes a primary feature of that co-operation. The Erasmus sector of the Socrates programme clearly demonstrates that a study period abroad can constitute a particularly precious experience, not only because it the best way to discover countries, ideas, languages and cultures different from one's own but also because it is assuming a growing importance in the evolution of university and professional careers.

The recognition of the studies undertaken and the qualifications obtained is a preliminary condition to the creation of a single European area in the field of education where students and teachers can move freely without barriers. It is for this reason that ECTS - the English acronym for the European Community Course Credit Transfer System - was born, originally as a pilot project within the framework of the previous Erasmus programme, with the objective of promoting the academic recognition of studies undertaken abroad. Given that external evaluation of ECTS demonstrated the potential of the system in a conclusive way, the European Commission decided to include ECTS in the Socrates programme, in particular within Sector I which is reserved to higher education (Erasmus). After the pilot stage which was conceived with a limited application in mind, ECTS is now becoming much more prominent and evolving to the extent of becoming a permanent feature of the European dimension of higher education.

ECTS is above all an instrument for the purposes of creating transparency, establishing the conditions necessary to bringing institutions closer together and broadening the range of choices offered to students. Its application facilitates the recognition of students' academic results owing to the use of standards understood by all in the same way - credits and grades - as well as a better understanding of the national systems of higher education. ECTS is founded upon three basic elements: information on study plans and student results, reciprocal agreement (between the participating institutions and the student) and the use of ECTS credits (values which represent the workload done by the student).

Principal Characteristics of ECTS

As mentioned in the introduction above, ECTS is founded upon three basic elements: information on study plans and student results, reciprocal agreement (between the participating institutions and the student) and the use of ECTS credits (values which represent the workload done by the student). These three basic elements are rendered operative through three fundamental documents: the information brochure, the application form/learning agreement and the transcript of records as to the studies done. But the essential aspect is that ECTS is activated by the students, the teachers and the institutions which intend to make studying abroad an integral part of the learning experience. Of itself, ECTS does not in any way determine the contents, the structure or the equivalence of study programmes. These qualitative aspects must be decided upon directly by the higher education institutions at the moment of laying down, either through bilateral or multilateral agreements, the basis for a viable co-operation. The code of good practice proposed by ECTS offers the interested parties the tools suitable to ensuring transparency and facilitating academic recognition.

Full academic recognition is a sine qua non condition of student mobility within the framework of the Socrates/Erasmus programme. Full academic recognition presupposes that the period of study abroad (including exams and other forms of assessment) effectively substitutes a comparable period of study (including exams and other forms of assessment) in the institution of origin notwithstanding the fact that there may be differences in the contents of the programme.

ECTS is based on voluntary use and reciprocal trust at academic level among the participating institutions. Every institution chooses its own partners.

 Transparency

ECTS guarantees transparency through the following instruments:

• ECTS credits, which represent - in the form of a numerical value assigned to a course unit - the workload that a student must undertake in order to complete a given course unit. The credits express the quantity of work which every course unit requires with respect to the global volume of work necessary to successfully complete a full year's study at the institution, that is: lectures, practical work, seminars, traineeships, research or surveys, personal study - either at home or in the library - together with exams and other forms of student assessment. ECTS is, therefore, based on the overall workload of the student and not merely limited exclusively to lecture hours. In the context of ECTS, 60 credits represent the workload for a full academic year's study and, as a rule, 30 credits are equivalent to a semester and 20 credits to a trimester.
• The ECTS information brochure, which provides useful information to students and personnel about the institutions, faculties/departments, course organisation and structure as well as the individual course units.
• The ECTS learning agreement, which describes the study plan the student has to follow and indicates the ECTS credits that shall be granted upon satisfactory completion thereof. The agreement binds the student to following the host university's programme as an integral part of their higher education, the institution of origin to guaranteeing the student full academic recognition of the credits obtained abroad and, the host institution to providing the agreed course units to the extent allowed by the academic calendar.
• The ECTS transcript of records, which presents the student's academic results in a clear, complete and comprehensible manner for each part and which must be easily transferable from one institution to another.

To facilitate the academic recognition of the studies undertaken or completed abroad, good communication and flexibility are required. In this regard the ECTS co-ordinators carry out a fundamental role given that it is they who mainly oversee the academic and administrative aspects of ECTS.

As a rule, it is necessary to make available to the students who study abroad the entire range of course units of the department that applies ECTS, including those units relating to postgraduate studies. The students must be able to follow regular courses - and not courses especially set up for them - and must be given the opportunity to satisfy the demands of the host institution in terms of the conferral of an academic qualification. Reliance on ECTS credits guarantees the organisation of programmes which are reasonable in terms of workload for the period of study abroad. For example, a student whose course unit choices total 120 ECTS credits for a year should have to work twice as hard as an average student of the host institution while a student whose study plan totals 30 ECTS credits for an entire academic year should have to do half the work done by an average student of the host institution, in effect studying only part time.

ECTS, moreover, allows the student to continue their studies abroad. In fact, it can happen that once the original study period is over the student may not wish to return to their original institution but may instead prefer, thanks to the ECTS system, to remain in the host institution - possibly to graduate from there - or move on to a third institution. Any such decision may not be taken without the agreement of all institutions concerned which in any case have to lay down the conditions which the student has to fulfil in order to graduate from the host institution or transfer to a third institution. In so much as the ECTS certificate is a chronology of the student's academic record it can constitute a particularly useful instrument for the institutions face with such a decision.