Monday, November 23, 2015

Academic Differences

Thankfully, the actual culture of academics in Sweden does not seem so very different from the USA.

Education is conducted in degree programs consisting of courses; these courses are similar to our US courses with lectures, group projects, presentations, essays, and exams.

Sweden uses the ECTS system of credit hour accumulation.

Different US academic institutions will interpret ECTS slightly differently, but suffice it to say for purposes of estimation that a US-ECTS equivalency could be established by multiplying US credit hours by two.

A full course load in Sweden is at least four courses of 7.5 ECTS weight per SEMESTER.

A key difference to be had therein is that in Sweden you do not take all of your semester's courses simultaneously- rather you take only one (at maximum, two) course at a time and only that course.

This is a more intensive style of education that we can find example of at our local Tusculum college.

As far as academic support is concerned, we can look to the substantial cultural similarity between our two educational cultures to expect relative familiarity therein.

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