What's the difference(s) between a university and a college?

Question

I was just wondering. I don't know what are the differences between them. I am a high school junior and am looking on different sites and they are all confusing.

Answer 1

A college is a smaller part of the university system typically, where the university is the entire collective, the college is more of a division or part of the university that is intended to perform a specific function. The terms get mixed up pretty often, almost to the point where there is no definite black and white distinction between the two anymore.

Think of it this way, you attend the University of (insert state or name here), and you get your basics out of the way. Then, you continue on with your major and in most cases, the classes and professors most related to your major are grouped together into the college of (insert trade name here). I.E. The College of Business at So-and-so University. Or, the College of Engineering and Architecture at SSU.

Hope that helps any. Some schools are so small or just 2-year colleges that they are just the college of something or somewhere.

Answer 2

College - (Latin collegium) is a term most often used today to denote an educational institution. More broadly, it can be the name of any group of colleagues (see for example electoral college, College of Arms). Originally it meant a group of people living together under a common set of rules (con-, "together" + leg-, "law"); indeed, some colleges call their members "fellows". The precise usage of the term varies among English-speaking countries.

University - is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees at all levels (bachelor, master, and doctorate) in a variety of subjects. A university provides both tertiary and quaternary education. The word university is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, roughly meaning "community of masters and scholars".

So really a university is a higher education.

Answer 3

A university offers higer-degree programs, like Masters and Doctorates. A college only offers Associates and Bachelors degrees. Yet the world "college" is also used in a university to tell what kind of program a undergrad student is under involving their major, like the College of Nursing for Nursing students.

Answer 4

colleges are to make points so u can go to a university, like if u don't have the necessary points or credits to be accepted into a university, have u heard of PCC, pasadena community college, this is acollege, compared to Harvard Law, or Medical, or UCLA, or USC, those are universities.

Answer 5

its pretty much the same thing. maybe you mean a 2 year junior college and a 4 year univeristy?