Explaining foreign Academic Certificate In my Academic Certificate you can see the column which is named “Hours”, where the left number indicates auditorium study time of the course, which is referred as contact hours in EU. And the right number is related to time spent in preparation for exams, self-study and homework. In the rightmost column you can see marks that are given in two grading scales, the classical Russian one and the ECTS system. Also there is such a mark named “passed”, which is given for courses where students achievements are assessed by the final Test. This Test can only be either passed or failed. As I mentioned ECTS model is still under experiment in my country, so no credits are given for courses currently and, therefore hours and marks remain the main units to evaluate student work.