College

The term college (Latin collegium) is most often used today to denote an educational institution. The precise usage of the term varies among English-speaking countries. However, it can be the name of any group of colleagues; originally it meant a group of people living together under a common set of rules (con-, "together" + leg-, "law"). As a consequence members of colleges were originally styled "fellows" and still are in some places.

United States of America

By contrast to British usage, in American English the term "college" is generally reserved for institutions of higher education, which are often totally independent and fully empowered to grant degrees. The usual practice in America today is to call an institution made up of several faculties and granting a range of higher degrees a "university" while a smaller institution only granting bachelor's or associate's degrees is called a "college". (See liberal arts colleges, community college). Nevertheless, a few of America's most prestigious universities, such as Boston College, Dartmouth College and the College of William and Mary, have retained the term "college" in their names for historical reasons though they offer a wide range of higher degrees. This problem led, in part, to the threatened lawsuit between Yale College Wrexham (equivalent to an American 'high school' and Yale University, the latter claiming copyright infringement.

Related Topics:
American English - Bachelor's - Associate's degrees - Liberal arts colleges - Community college - Boston College - Dartmouth College - College of William and Mary - Yale College Wrexham - Yale University

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Usage of the terms varies among the states, each of which operates its own institutions and licenses private ones. In 1996 for example, Georgia changed all of its four-year colleges to universities, and all of its vocational technology schools to technical colleges. (Previously, only the four research institutions were called universities.) Other states have changed the names of individual colleges, many having started as a teachers' college or vocational school (such as an A&M — an agricultural and mechanical school) that ended up as a full-fledged state university.

Related Topics:
States - 1996 - Georgia - Vocational - Technology - School - Technical college - Research - Name - Teacher - Vocational school - Agricultural - Mechanical - State university

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It should be noted, too, that "University" and "College" do not exhaust all possible titles for an American institution of higher education. Other options include "institute", "academy", and "school" as in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology http://www.mit.edu, United States Military Academy at West Point, New York http://www.usma.edu, or the Juilliard School.

Related Topics:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology - United States Military Academy - West Point, New York - Juilliard School

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The term college is also, as in Britain, used for a constituent semi-autonomous part of a larger university but generally organized on academic rather than residential lines. For example, at many institutions, the undergraduate portion of the university can be briefly referred to as the college (such as The College at Brown or Harvard College at Harvard) while at others each of the faculties may be called a "college" (the "college of engineering", the "college of nursing", and so forth). Some American universities, such as Rice and Yale, do have residential colleges along the lines of Oxford or Cambridge, but the name was clearly adopted in homage to the British system. Unlike the Oxbridge colleges, these residential colleges are not autonomous legal entities nor are they typically much involved in education itself, being primarily concerned with room, board, and social life. At the University of California, San Diego, however, each of the six residential colleges does teach its own core writing courses and has its own distinctive set of graduation requirements.

Related Topics:
Brown - Harvard College - Harvard - Rice - Yale - Residential colleges - University of California, San Diego

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The origin of America's usage

The founders of the first institutions of higher education in the United States were graduates of Oxford and Cambridge. The small institutions they founded would not have seemed to them like universities — they were tiny and did not offer the higher degrees in medicine and theology. Furthermore, they were not composed of several small colleges. Instead, the new institutions felt like the Oxbridge colleges they were used to — small communities, housing and feeding their students who were instructed by residential tutors (see United Kingdom/Universities and Colleges above). However, when the first students came to be graduated, these "colleges" proceeded to assume (without any recognized authority) the right to confer degrees upon them. In Europe only universities could grant degrees. Presumably the leaders of Harvard College (which granted America's first degrees in 1642) thought of their college as the first of many residential colleges which would grow up into a New Cambridge university. However, over time, no new colleges were founded; and Harvard grew and added higher faculties. Eventually, it changed its title to university, but the term "college" had stuck and "colleges" had sprung up all over America.

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