In the UK, a university is the generic term for a place of higher education where a degree is earned. Undergraduates and post-graduates can attend a university.

A college is one of two things - it is either a school within a university (as in the University Colleges of Osford, Cambridge and London) or it simply means a more general place of higher or further education. So, for example, A-levels are studied in the Harrow area of London at colleges, rather than at school, at least in the state sector.

In the US, what we call "university" is what they call "college", as I understand it. So here in the UK, people go to "uni", whereas they go to "college" in the States.

I'm not at all sure that that clarifies anything....

Thank you, Martin - this is a question that has puzzled me too, even though I live here...
My older daughter will start her two years of studying for A-levels at Reigate College in September, also known locally as the Sixth Form College. On the other hand, I used to refer to my art school as college rather than uni - it's proper name was Surrey Institute of Art and Design University College!

Thanks Martin, it does explain something, at least about the British system. The undergraduate/college vs graduate/university came up in an American novel, so I suspect there are further complications involved.

In the U.S., a university offers post graduate programs and a college does not. For example, Harvard University offers not only Bachelor Degree programs but also Masters and Doctorate programs. There are many excellent colleges that only offer Bachelor Degrees, for example Wellesley College. Hillary Clinton went to Wellesley College for her BA in Political Science and then on to Yale University for her Juris Doctor (law requires a three year post graduate degree in the U.S.).

Universities tend to be larger institutions than colleges.

This a good question because I think most people in the U.S. aren't really clear on the differences between the two institutions, and use the terms interchangeably in many circumstances. For instance, we probably wouldn't say, "y son is away at university," but rather, "my son is away at college," even though he is attending a large university. Of course we might say simply, "my son is away at school," and it would be understand that he was at a place of higher education, and that he is over 18 as boarding schools for younger people are not all that common here.

Martin and Merry answered the question very well, I hope I haven't muddied the waters.

Netla, Martin has summed up the Britsh situation re Colleges/Universities/school. But it is almost a case of what's in a name as not only are some schools for older pupils (rather like senior High Schools in the US) known as Colleges, but often quite ordinary 'bog-standard' comprehensive schools (so described by a Govt. Minister) are titled 'College' possibly implying a status they do not deserve.
Then of course there are the Public Schools (the opposite of the US schools of that name) as they are private and usually very expensive. Eton College, Marlborough College, Winchester College for eg.
There are Colleges for mature students, technical colleges, (used to be called night school) Colleges of Further Education that offer 'Evening Classes', military colleges and so on. The list is endless.
Presumably Anyanka's 'Art College' is/was affiliated to London University and is able to offer a degree from that instituation, as it cannot/could not do it in its own name.
In my 'young day' many moons ago, students seeking a 'higher education' either went to university and gained a degree or went to art college, teacher's training college, nursing school and so on and at the end of 3/4 years came out with a certificate/diploma.
Today we are following the American route with far more students attending Universities and then coming out to a job market that has little need for most of them.

Merry, I don't think there are any universities in the UK that offer just a BA/BSc degree. It is always possible to study to a higher level MA, doctorates etc. This is where they try and make their money!

To expand on what Siobhan said, in the U.S., Universities offer post-graduate programs. As in the U.K. though, most (prehaps all) Universities are also made up of colleges. So at Duke University (my alma mater), the undergraduate Art & Sciences departments are part of Trinity College. As far as I know, such "colleges" exists solely for administrative purposes; I always say I went to Duke or Duke University but never Trinity College at Duke University.

OTOH, I might say "I went to college at Duke University" which is just another way of saying that I did my undergraduate studies at an institution where they offer post-graduate degrees.

Hope that helps,

Russ

In places like Oxford, your college is your home - where you live, where you eat, where you get your degree. There used to be a quiz show called "University Challenge" - but each Oxford or Cambridge or London college entered their own team. So people refer to the fact they went to (say)Oxford, but often other people will want to know which college they attended.

London is even more extreme - UCL is University College, London, but it's really a separate university in it's own right. Imperial College is another. Nottingham used to be a University College of London, too. No-one now refers to the University of London - the "colleges" are now all completely separate. I can't remember the last time I heard someone say they went to the University of London.

I know of no universities in the UK apart from London, Oxford and Cambridge which have a collegiate system.

But I went to Sussex University. And that was that. No colleges. And that's true of the vast majority of universities in the UK.

Martin, I think Durham Uni still is 'collegiate' and the DH who attended Bangor in N Wales says it and Cardiff, Swansea etc are all part of the University of Wales.

University Challenge was resurrected some years ago and is now chaired by Jeremy Paxman "Come on, come on I need an answer!" It must be an indication of the quality of the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge that although often coming from Colleges of no more than a few hundred students they can take on and beat those representing the big metropolitan universities who have student 'bodies' running into several thousand.

US RP'ers may be surprised to know that until the nineteenth century Oxford and Cambridge where the only universities in England and you had to be a member of the Church of England to attend. London Uni was then opened as a non-religious institution. It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that the so-called 'red-brick' universities were opened in the large industrial cities (Birmingham, Manchester etc). It was also then that women first got their feet on the higher education ladder . . .and Cambridge, although admitting women didn't offer them full degrees until the 1940's! Until the 1960's only a small proportion of students were women, I think now there are probably more women than men.

Veer, we have those high school colleges, too. Baltimore has two that I know. The Baltimore City College is the 3rd oldest public high school in the United States. Here in Towson is the Calvert Hall College High School - a Catholic boy's prep school.

Just to make the definitions even more confusing... In Canada, college and university are both post-seconday institutions. University is for undergraduate and graduate studies along with professional degrees such as law, medicine, dentistry, education and others of such.

At college you generally earn a diploma instead of a degree, is usually 2-3 year programs (as opposed to the 4 year university degrees) and generally teaches programs that are more "hands-on" and less theoretical (like carpentry, law clerks, dental hygenists, etc.). College also costs about half of what university costs in tuition fees.

Some of our 'traditional' or more established universities also have affiliate colleges which are usually instutitions that used to be colleges but have proved to have a good research base and join up with a university in order to offer degrees. These schools typically focus on a few speciality programs and, therefore, usually harder to get accepted into and cost more to attend.

It is different in the US and the UK. I have had the UK system explained to me several times and I still don't have a good grasp on it.

In the US, we give the word college several related definitions. I can think of at least four, and will give examples of each from my own experience.

First, as Siobhan mentioned, it is used generically to mean higher education. My daughter is away at college right now, attending Humboldt State University.

Second, two year institions that offer either technical or transfer programs are often called colleges, either community colleges if publicly funded, or junior colleges if public or private. I currently attend a sewing program at Canada College, a public two year school. (And at the rate I am going, it is going to take me about six years to complete the classes!)

Next,as someone else mentioned, a college can be a division in a larger institution. For example, I attended Pennsylvania State University, and studied a major from the College of Liberal Arts. Some universites call such divisions 'Schools"; some subdivide colleges into schools and then into departments. There is no rule.

And finally some colleges are stand-alone institutions. Usually they do not offer graduate degrees, but I don't know if this is always true. Some of the institutions that prefer to be called colleges rather than universities are among the most academically rigorous institutions of higher learning we have. Think of Haverford, Bennington, and Swarthmore, all colleges rather than universities, all very elite (and extremely expensive, too). I have wondered if there is a kind of reverse snobbery here, where they assume that their excellence is so self-evident that they don't need to call themselves universities! On the other hand, consider some of the old state teacher's training schools from the 19th centuries. As they evolved over time into general institutions of higher learning were very eager to call themselves universities instead of colleges to signal the change and distance themselves from their moire limited origins. An example here would be Slippery Rock State University. (I went there, too.)

Rosefolly (who can't seem to separate herself from going to school)

This is fascinating. Obviously, the word has been around for long enough to come to be used for several different types of school.

Veer, now I finally understand how Jonathan Swift could be sent to college at age six.

Thanks everyone for your contribution.

And I went to University College at the University of Louisville, simply because that is what they called their night classes division. Nutty!

Here in South Australia a university is a institution which can confer degrees and post graduate qualifications, and a college is a private secondary school in most instances.
The University of Adelaide has some accomodation properties in North Adelaide which are all called colleges, too, but these are strictly for living in and not connected to any particular part of the uni.

There are some exceptions. Some "colleges" in the US do, in fact, offer graduate degrees. One example is in my area, the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia. I think I read that, apart from Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the USA.

I have to agree that the distinction between a "college" and a "university" is very blurry in the US. My father received his Masters from (are you reading, Rosefolly?) Shippensburg State College forty-odd years ago but like many of the former colleges in PA's state-supported institutions of higher learning, Shippensburg has been upgraded to a university. Ignorant or not, I always thought a college was smaller and a university was larger, often with divisions of colleges within. Like Rose, I am a Penn Stater with a degree from its college of Liberal Arts.

Chris writes about some of Baltimore's prep schools (private) and high schools (public) being called "colleges." The ubiquitious question "where did you go to school?" has always referred to where one went to college and I've found this to be true all over the US. True, that is, till I moved to Baltimore and the questioner is referring to high school instead.

Baltimore - the biggest small town in America - where NASCAR gets preempted for Lacrosse.