How does the credit system work?

Each course at the University of Guelph has been allocated a credit weight in accordance with the number of hours of academic work involved. Most single-semester courses are 0.5 credits (but not all). A majority of our science majors require 20.0 credits or approximately 40 courses to graduate. Guelph runs on a semester system and in each semester most students take 2.5 credits or 5.0 credits in an academic year (2 semesters). Therefore an Honours degree take approximately 4 years to complete and a General degree takes approximately 3 years to complete (15.0 credits).