PHTG's education concept has been defined in consideration of the European Credit Transfer System ECTS. The ECTS is a system for the accreditation, transfer and accumulation of study results and is recognised throughout Europe. The ECTS's key goals are to achieve increased comparability of the various study programmes in Europe and ensure more transparency and flexibility with regard to organising studies abroad. The credits and marks promulgated by the ECTS are benchmarks that make study results comparable and transferable between different universities.

The ECTS relates to students' workload required to meet the targets of their course. Targets are best defined and recorded in the form of study results and skills to be learnt. The related workload is expressed in credits.

The ECTS is based on the agreement that a full-time student's workload in an academic year corresponds to 60 credits (or 30 for one semester). The workload refers to the time students need on an average in order to achieve the required targets, and comprises all activities that are part of the studies also in a broader sense:

• Participation in lectures, courses and seminars (attendance, preparation and processing)
• Real-world experiences
• Self-study (library or home)
• Exam preparation and attendance and final theses

1 ECTS credit corresponds to a study workload of 25-30 hours. Exchange students are able to fully transfer the credits they acquired at PHTG to their home university course. The prerequisite for this is that a study or learning agreement to that effect is concluded between the student and their home university prior to doing the Exchange.

Credits are only awarded if the students can give evidence of sufficient results upon examination of the knowledge and skills required at the end of a course. The examination of results is, for example, conducted in the form of an oral or written exam during, at the end or upon completion of a module, in the form of a presentation or an essay, the confirmation of attendance of lessons or in the form of proof of results in self-study.

Not all modules at PHTG end in an assessment of students' results, however. In the last academic year in particular, results are only documented as "target met / target not met". For all other modules, PHTG's assessment key has been simplified as follows: