It turns out that in U.S. universities (specifically at Virginia Tech) among the elective courses, you can take ones like “Geography of Wine” and “Science of Brewing.” Specifically, a friend of mine, a friend of Liz’s, took the wine course, and besides the lectures, the program includes a group assignment where students buy several bottles, taste them thoroughly according to all the scientific principles and fill out forms that relate theory to practice.
Specifically, the wine and its geography course is worth three credits. That’s three lecture hours per week over a semester (15 weeks).
Probably, not everyone knows what these credits are. They are a unit of measurement for educational courses. They reflect the amount of work a student is expected to complete to finish the course. Typically, 1 credit is equivalent to 1 hour of classroom lectures _per week_ (or more; depending on the course) for an entire semester, plus the expected independent study workload. To earn a degree, a student must accumulate a certain number of credits, which is set by the program. These credits are distributed among mandatory courses (necessary for the specialization or educational program), elective courses within the specialization, and free electives (which can be chosen from any field of knowledge). The wine course is an example from the third category. Students usually register for courses at the beginning of each semester. They choose courses based on the requirements of their program, class availability, and counsel from a counselor— an academic advisor.
To earn a bachelor’s degree, you need about 120-130 credits. The bachelor’s program takes 4 years or 8 semesters or about 120 weeks. On average, students take about 15 credits per semester, which lasts 15 weeks (thus, in total over 4 years it comes out to 15*2*4=120), which means an average of 15 lecture hours per week. Dividing by five days, that is three hours per day. And for some courses, the actual number of hours in the classroom may be greater than the number of credits. And, of course, there’s also a heap of hours for independent study, which we’re not even counting here.
Some subjects can be passed in high school through AP/IB classes. Each university credits these courses differently. But often it helps save time and money, and many finish university in 3-3.5 years because of this.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 