There are certain courses you need to take to fulfill the requirements for earning a diploma or a degree. These courses are usually stated very clearly in a curriculum or degree program requirements list.
Courses that don’t fulfill a specific slot in a degree program requirement list are elective classes.
Some degree programs contain a certain amount of elective credit hours, which means those programs allow students to enjoy some flexibility in a few areas and take classes that interest them—as long as those classes are offered a certain level of difficulty.
For example, students majoring in English Literature may have the opportunity to take two upper-level “elective” courses from a Humanities department. Those courses could include anything from Art Appreciation to German History.
When students transfer from one school to another, they may find that many courses they’ve taken (for credit) actually transfer into the new school as elective credits. This happens if the second school doesn’t offer courses that the first school offered. The transferred courses simply don’t fit into any curriculum.
