With the adaptation to the Bologna model, the new credit system for higher education was established in Sweden from 1 July 2007. This means that one study term is equal to 30 credits, "högskolepoäng" or "hp" for short. This can be translated to approximately 30 ECTS.

In the old system one study term was equal to 20 credits, "poäng" or "p".

Students usually take one course at a time even if courses of short duration, for instance 7,5 credits, often run parallel with another course of 7,5 credits during a 10-week period.

Please note that in Sweden the number of teaching hours per week may vary considerably between different subjects and courses. Thus, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the number of points for a course and the number of teaching hours for that course, as is often the case in some other countries. Every course, however, requires full-time study equivalent to its number of points.

There are several systems of grading, but grades are normally awarded on a basis of 5 (highest) to 3 (lowest) or "fail". For some courses and programmes, "pass with distinction" (väl godkänd), "pass" (godkänd), or "fail" (underkänd). Exchange students will be graded in the ECTS scale in parallell to the Swedish grades.

All courses include written and/or oral examinations. There are, however, usually no final exams covering the entire semester's coursework (i.e. grouping the subcourses together) or covering an entire general study programme.

Translation of Swedish grading systems into the ECTS grading system (pdf)