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Italian University System

ITALIAN UNIVERSITY SYSTEM

THREE-YEAR DEGREES AND SPECIALISED/ADVANCED DEGREES

The Education Ministerial Decree no. 270 of October 2004 decided an extensive reforms of the Italian University System so that now students can enroll at the following degree (laurea):

  • the firs level degree is the "Laurea Triennale" obtained at the end of a three year course. It prepares students for intermediate job positions in the labour market;
  • the second level degree is the "Laurea Magistrale", a post-graduate degree obtained after a two-year course. It prepares students for higher, managerial and professional positions.

WHAT ARE CREDITS?

The University of Macerata has adopted the ECTS system as its credit accumulation system: 1 Italian Credit (CFU, college credit) corresponds to 25 hours of student work and is equivalent to 1 ECTS. ECTS credits represent the workload and defined learning outcomes ("what the person knows, understands and is able to do") of a given course or program. One year of study corresponds to 60 learning credits.

Due to different cultural and academic traditions, European higher education systems have developed different national grade systems, and have also used them differently even within the same country.

Since exchange, students are entitled to fair treatment and transparency of their grades when credits are transferred from one institution to another, in order to ensure that information about a given student's performance is consistent and fair, the ECTS User's Guide was developed by the European Union in 2015.

In compliance with the rules laid down in the Guide, the University of Macerata provides the table on the statistical distribution of positive grades awarded in the various courses of study attended by the student, which shows how the available grade scale is used in the various courses of study.

It is possible to consult our ECTS grading table for the assessment of student's performance at each subject level considering as many prior years as the length of each degree level (e.g., for a bachelor's degree, the years 2022, 2021, and 2020 were considered) to be used for a.y. 2023/2024.

WHAT ARE CLASSES? (classi)

Under the new system, following the reform, all degree courses are grouped into classes (classi) which relate to a specific field of study. Degrees belonging to one class have the same legal value.