HONZIK, Jan M
Udolni 53, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic, honzik@dean.fee.vutbr.cz, http://www.fee.vutbr.cz
Abstract: Higher and especially university education is looking for its international dimension. Mobility of university students and professors, well-known since the MA, is making comeback. The expected number of migrating students in the Europe cannot be compared with that of the distant past. How can universities provide full, easy and transparent service to crowds of moving students? How does each university facilitate the quality and quantity of study units finished at a partner institution? How can they manage the widening diversity of study programmes faced with the need for more and more economic delivery of knowledge? Is it possible to How to find features common to all European, if not world, university education unifying the tertiary educated professionals? Are there any special features in engineering education? An attempt to find the answers to these questions, from the point of view of Central European University, is given in the paper. It tries to briefly summarise the history, present state and expected future of the credit system, introduced and supported by EU authorities as the tool supporting the European mobility of university students. T.E.X.T. (Trans European Exchange and Transfer Consortium) as one of the pilot organisations in the credit system and student mobility will be mentioned.
Keywords: ECTS, credit, euro-credit, transfer, T.E.X.T., mobility of students, study module, study evaluation
Existence of credits for measuring the progress in the study is connected with the introduction of the "elective system" at American universities in the late 1860s. The free choice of courses was declared at Harvard at 1869. In the Michigan University calendar were defined "120 hours of credit" required for the awarding of a Bachelor of Arts in 1901. The fixed amount of hours for individual courses was declared. The value of credits varied since that time from university to university and from country to country. Universities that used the credit systems belonged mostly to Anglo-American cultural sphere. The amount of credits earned by the student served as the measure of his/her progress in the study program. The value of the credit was usually related to the time necessary for the successful completion of the course, mostly expressed in the weekly workload. Accumulation of credits provided the tool for a more liberal composition of the curriculum.
Developments of European Community brought the need for comparable attributes of education at all levels. Mastricht treatment introduced free labour-market and mobility of labour force. The reliable comparability of professional skills started to be of higher importance. The concept of "European dimension of the higher education" was introduced in [4]. One of the most important sources of the European dimension was the European mobility of students.
What does "European dimension" of higher education mean? A student who has never left his home institution and country doesn't realise the cultural, social, economic, industrial, politic, geographic, climatic and many other differences among unified countries of common European community. Nearly everything is different in a foreign country starting with a menu in the restaurant, a ticket for the bus and ending with the library service or lecture time table. While there is a siesta in Spain, people are working as usual in Finland. When people in Czech Republic start working, they are waking in Ireland. Student that changes his stereotypical life and overcomes many small obstacles during his study at a university in a different country, recognises "diversity of European unity" and this is the main concept of the European dimension of his/her education.
There is no problem to manage the mobility of sporadic students across Europe. However, according to the meaning of European authorities, every single university student is expected to spend at least one semester at a partner institution. This giant project needs very systematic support. The system should prevent all the individual negotiation and agreement on the size of the courses and marks obtained by student by passing the examinations. Here the credit plays its second possible role, the role of transfer credit dependent upon the size or proportion of the course.
Looking at the regulation of different universities running the credit systems we may find different rates of the credit. Mostly the rate expresses, or is related to, the contact hours or overall hours per subject weekly. The most popular definition of the Euro-credit is "one sixtieth of the academic year workload of the average student". Why sixty credits per year? The structure of the academic years consisting from independently enrolled units varies in universities from one full year via two semesters to three trimesters. The good common multiple for all three sizes is 60 credits per year, what means 30 credits per semester and 20 credits per trimester. There are many different ways on how to determine the value of the course in credits. There are systems, which equally assigns the credits to the courses, there are systems in the amount is determined by careful analysis or by student questionnaire. We should realize the approximate character of the credit value. The quality of study period is nominally evaluated usually by means of the average of the weighted by credit values.
4 ERASMUS and ECTS
Several projects were issued by EC authorities to systematically support European student mobility. In the university environment the ERASMUS project is most known and ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) is its supportive tool. In ERASMUS two modes of mobility are recognised. "Exchange" means that the host student spends a period (mostly one or two semesters) at a partner institution, enrols courses according to the scheme agreed on by both partner institutions and brings back the results to the home institution with full recognition and acceptance of the marks and credits. "Transfer" means, that the student can continue, mostly after a starting period at the home institution, on the studies at several institutions, obtaining the award on the other then home institution. This more sophisticated mobility is rarer but can't be excluded.
There are several important questions accompanying mobility: how to cover educational expenses per student? How to prevent effort of students to spend the exchange period mostly at prestigious universities and especially to finish there the studies and obtain there an award? The main principle for "exchange" is the principle of equality of access at the home and partner institution. If, at the home institution, there are no tuition fees, the situation is the same for the study period at the partner institution. A student fulfills his/her financial duties at the home institution. A student staying at partner institution in the "transfer" mode is still regarded as a home student at the institution where he/she was matriculated.
It is highly recommended that credits are used in both their functions – accumulation and transfer. There are some schools using credits only for students involved in mobility using hidden or implicit conversion of marking and credit scale.
The answer to the other question is in the form of a recommendation: try not to be elitist! The main added value of the stage at the partner institution is not the prestige of its courses or of its famous professors but the experience from social and personal contacts at international student society and in the common everyday life of a foreign country!
T.E.X.T. (Trans European Exchange and Transfer) Consortium was established in the late eighties at the University of Derby, U.K. as the organisation of several dozens of European higher education institution of various levels and orientation. The Consortium was leaded by professor Roger Waterhouse, Vice-Chancellor of Derby University, followed by Mr. Denis McGrath, registrar of NCEA in Dublin (National Council for Education Awards) as the first presidents. After the huge success of the first half of the decade based on efficient support of networks of institution in common international projects, the consortium is forming policy for the new century. Ii is not the society of the most prestigious universities but the alliance of true European institutions looking for their strength in real co-operation, mostly in educational activities. You may find more information at http://www.derby.ac.uk/TEXT.
The Velvet Revolution in 1989 had a great impact on Czech life and led to major political, economic and social changes, accompanied by the effort to change the educational systems in higher education toward the European and world standards. Among numerous literal sources studied at that time in my faculty were two articles, distributed as the draft papers for the rector conference planned in 1993 in Utrecht, Holland, to participants of the T.E.X.T. conference in Toulon, France in 1991 [1,2]. Both papers described in detail what is now called ECTS. The idea was implemented in new regulations for the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the Brno University of Technology (FEECS BUT) starting from the academic year 1992/93 - before the conference of rectors in Utrecht in 1992. Several credit systems were simultaneously launched at Czech universities, but only one other was based on Euro-credits (University of Economy in Prague). The next academic year all BUT faculties adopted basically the same system.
At that time several missions of the President and Vice-president of T.E.X.T., Prof. Waterhouse and Denis McGrath at Czech universities took place. Credit system was taken as obvious concept of the changes in the style life of higher education sphere. Several universities that started with the credit system were taken from American or other sources which gradually transformed their systems to ECTS. The close co-operation of NCEA in Dublin with one private regional college in Uherske Hradiste (EPI – European Polytechnic Institute) led to the approval of Irish National Certificate, National Diploma, and Bachelor courses based on the ECTS credit system and the process was crowned by the accreditation of the courses by Czech Accreditation board, thus establishing the first of two new non-university institutions in the Czech Republic. The idea of the credit system proved its fruitfulness.
The introduction of concepts like the credit system resulted in major changes in the educational style. The great advantage of the first educational reformers in the Czech Republic was that these changes took place at the same tame of changes in the society, as a whole. Naturally any change is painful.
Engineering education, which was strongly supported by socialist government, was faced with the crisis of a decreasing numbers of students. Competition with "soft" studies and a gradually decreasing population made technical universities introduce changes, in order to improve the image of the school. The credit system and its cumulative feature allows for the forming of a more liberal individual curriculum and makes engineering studies more attractive. In the history of the development of the course system at technically oriented universities, a new curriculum with a new set of subjects was introduced. The credit system and its cumulative principle allows any individual student to create his/her own customised curriculum under the reasonable regulation of its conceptual structure and composition. It may be stated that engineering education became pioneers in the introduction of the credit system.
Free movement across borders was an unreal dream of inhabitants for most socialist countries before 1989. Suddenly it became possible. Mobility faces a new problem – language competence. English is strongly preferred and the level of its knowledge is improving. Nevertheless, this is not enough for Europe. Many countries expect a knowledge of language other than English and sometimes offers reasonable support to incoming students (France). The level of language knowledge among secondary school graduates other than the gymnasium type is very poor. These students make up more than 50% of the candidates for study in engineering. The space for languages at technical universities is limited mainly to professionally oriented improvement of English, rarely for beginners. The examination of language at technical universities is rather soft and never mortal. This is the situation in which the interest of students of engineering for international mobility is weak with European English speaking countries being overwhelmed and overloaded with applications from the East. Generally, the current state of affairs is not optimistic from this point of view.
On the other hand, the small number of courses offering instruction in English is slowly increasing in Czech universities. The main reason is the motivation to teach self-paying foreign students, mostly from developing countries. The income both for teachers and the institution is highly incentive.
The credit system is a very efficient tool to enable the distant studies. Its cummulative principle allows to a student to transfer from one mode of study to another including the distant mode of study and life-long learning. Generally, delivery of the distant studies is efficient with large numbers of participants. It is true if the language if instruction is a language spoken by large portion of Europe or world population. The Czech language doesn't belong to this group of languages. I see the distant studies in our country being useful mainly in languages. The student advanced in languages would make a use of services of large distant or open universities offering instruction in English, German, French or Spanish. State financial support invested to foreign sources might be more efficient than to invest in new institution running the Czech distant courses. Learning tools for distant study, based of latest information technologies are too expensive and still language dependent!
One credit is defined as the unit of student load. A credit may be taken as the unit of the cost of education service too. As such, it may be used as the value for economic and budgeting formulas. The account at the "European Education Bank" expressed in Euro-credits may serve to moving student as the European currency, covering educational expenses during the study-life.
The history and the present state of the European credit system in the European context of numerous countries are fully described by Professor Dalichow in [1]. It is worth mentioning that the Hungarian credit system is one of the most developed systems among central European countries and it is legalised by the Government Decree since 1998. Even though it seems that the government decree violates the academic freedom of universities, it radically simplifies government statistics and some control mechanisms. ERASMUS made many universities introduce, or at least imitate, the existence of the credit system. ECTS is a necessary condition for ERASMUS support for mobility. The ECTS has started to be a massive and working system. As such it impress Trans-Atlantic partners at some of U.S. and Canadian universities and colleges and some universities in Asia. It seems to be a positive interface for the future of world student mobility.