Guild of Universities' Graduates Online

College Credit Hour

Posted on 9/10/2006

What are college credit hours, and how do they assist you in earning your undergraduate or graduate degrees? Credit hour is a system for making different classes equal. Take for instance a class on baking a cake and a class in General Physics. How do you make them equal so as to grade an individuals overall performance? Through the credit hour system the answer is possible. The Credit Hour measures classes by the number of total contact hour a teacher has with students. A three credit course is three contact hours per week. This allows a General Physics course to be compared with Baking a Cake 101. It's like comparing a dog with lightning. There is no real way to measure it. So it is a problem for us Scientists  to find a way to measure the situation.

The measuring stick for college is the credit hours, and you need a certain number of credit hours to graduate with your degree. For most undergraduate programmes you will need 120-128 to graduate. These credits can be taken at accredited universities and be transferred within such universities. A course taken at the University of California in Los Angeles, can be used for credit at Harvard because both schools are accredited. To gain college credit one can take regular classes or an exam like the CLEP that is based on standard information that you would have learned in the classes if you were to sit for the entire semester. The exams are general and most accredited universities accept CLEP. Amazingly CLEP is only one of the many for credit exams that can be taken.