In education, recognition of attendance and/or performance in an instructional activity that can be applied by a recipient to requirements for a degree or diploma.
In education in general, recognition for a student’s successful completion of work in a course but, more specifically, a unit of value awarded by a school for such work. In high schools, each course of study is generally worth one credit unit per semester, and the student must accumulate a specified number of these credits, with appropriate numbers from various areas of study (such as English, mathematics, or science), to qualify for graduation. At the college level, varying numbers of credits are awarded to courses, generally based on the number of hours per week that a student is scheduled to spend in the class. A literature class that meets for one hour on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for example, would generally carry three credits, sometimes called credit-hours. But an organic chemistry class that meets for the same three hours but also has two scheduled hours of laboratory work might carry five credits. At the end of the semester, a student’s grade for the course and the credits carried by the course are used to calculate his or her grade-point average.