College

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, College of Cardinals). Originally, it meant a group of persons living together under a common set of rules (con- = "together" + leg- = "law" or lego = "I choose"); indeed, some colleges call their members "fellows". The precise usage of the term varies among English-speaking countries.
United Kingdom
British usage of the word "college" remains the loosest, encompassing a range of institutions:


Schools
Certain private schools, known as "Public" schools in England, for children such as Eton College and Winchester College.[1]

Further Education
In general use, a college is an institution between secondary school and university, either a sixth form college or a college of further education and adult education which were usually called technical colleges. Recently, however, with the phasing out of polytechnical colleges the term has become less clear-cut.

Colleges of further education and adult education.
"Sixth form colleges", where students study for A Levels

Higher Education
In relation to universities, the term college normally refers to a part of the university which does not have degree-awarding powers in itself. Degrees are always awarded by universities whereas colleges are institutions or organisations which prepare students for the degree.

In some cases, colleges prepare students for the degree of a university of which the college is a part (eg colleges of the University of London, University of Cambridge, etc.) In other cases, colleges are independent institutions which prepare students to sit as external candidates at other universities (e.g. many higher education colleges and university colleges).

The constituent parts of collegiate universities, especially referring to the independent colleges that make up the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London
The constituent parts of collegiate universities which provide accommodation and pastoral services at St Andrews and Durham.
The constituent parts of collegiate universities, such as Lancaster and York and Kent.
Some universities, such as Imperial College London, which is a university in its own right. Also University College London and King's College London, which are federal colleges of the University of London but are also de facto universities in their own right as they can award their own degrees.
A name given to large groupings of faculties or departments, notably in the University of Edinburgh, and in the future, under restructuring plans, the University of Birmingham.
University colleges — independent higher education institutions that award degrees from a university.

Professional Bodies
Professional associations such as the Royal College of Organists, the Royal College of Surgeons and other various Royal Colleges.

[edit] Law Courts
The College of Justice or Court of Session of Scotland

United States

Agnes Scott CollegeMain article: Higher education in the United States
In American English, the word, in contrast to its many and varied British meanings, often refers to liberal arts colleges that provide education primarily at the undergraduate level. It can also refer to schools which offer a vocational, business, engineering, or technical curriculum. The term can either refer to both a self-contained institution that has no graduate studies or to the undergraduate school of a full university (i.e., that also has a graduate school). In popular American usage, the word "college" is the generic term for any post-secondary undergraduate education. Americans go to "college" after high school, regardless of whether the specific institution is formally a college or a university, and the word and its derivatives are the standard terms used to describe the institutions and experiences associated with American post-secondary undergraduate education.


Occidental College, a top American liberal arts collegeColleges vary in terms of size, degree, and length of stay. Two-year colleges offer the Associates degree (A.A.) and four-year colleges offer the Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) or Bachelor of Sciences (B.S.) degree. These are usually primarily undergraduate institutions, although some might have limited programs at the graduate level.

Four-year institutions in the U.S. which emphasize the liberal arts are liberal arts colleges. These colleges traditionally emphasize interactive instruction (although research is still a component of these institutions). Examples include Grove City College in Pennsylvania, Ramapo College of New Jersey and Wheaton College in Illinois. If not associated with a university, they are often categorized as residential and generally have smaller enrollment, class size, and teacher-student ratios than universities. These colleges often encourage a high level of teacher-student interaction at the center of which are classes taught by full-time faculty rather than graduate student TAs (who sometimes teach the classes at Research I and other universities). The colleges are either coeducational, women's colleges, or men's colleges. Some are historically black colleges. Some are also secular (or not affiliated with a particular religion) while others are involved in religious education. Many are private. Some are public liberal arts colleges. In addition, colleges such as Hampshire College, Pitzer College, Sarah Lawrence College, Bennington College, Marlboro College and New College of Florida offer experimental curriculums.


Boston CollegeOn the other hand, public and private universities are research-oriented institutions which service both an undergraduate and graduate student body. Graduate programs grant a variety of Master's degrees including M.B.A.s or M.F.A.s. The doctorate is the highest academic degree, and the Ph.D. is given in most fields. Medical schools award M.D.s while law schools award the J.S.D. as the highest academic achievement. These institutions usually have a large student body. Introductory seminars can have a class size in the hundreds in some of the larger schools. The interaction between students and full-time faculty can be limited as compared to some liberal arts colleges. At some of the larger universities some undergraduate classes are taught by graduate student TAs.

At the same time, some American universities, such as Boston College, Dartmouth College, the College of Charleston and The College of William & Mary, have retained the term "college" in their names for historical reasons or because of an undergraduate focus, although they offer 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 trademark infringement.[citation needed] As of 2003, there were 2,474 four-year colleges and universities in the United States.[2][3]

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-year 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.

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" (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), "academy" (United States Military Academy), "union" (Cooper Union), "conservatory" (New England Conservatory), and "school" (Juilliard School), although these titles are only for their official names. In colloquial use, they are still referred to as "college" when referring to their undergraduate studies.

The term college is also, as in the United Kingdom, 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 of the University of Chicago, Harvard College at Harvard, or Columbia College at Columbia) while at others each of the faculties may be called a "college" (the "college of engineering", the "college of nursing", and so forth). There exist other variants for historical reasons; for example, Duke University, which was called Trinity College until the 1920s, still calls its main undergraduate subdivision Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. Some American universities, such as Princeton, 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.[citation needed] 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 and the University of California, Santa Cruz, however, each of the residential colleges do teach its own core writing courses and has its own distinctive set of graduation requirements.


The origin of the U.S. usage
The founders of the first institutions of higher education in the United States were graduates of the University of Oxford and the University of 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 Oxford and Cambridge colleges they were used to — small communities, housing and feeding their students, with instruction from residential tutors (as in the United Kingdom, described above). When the first students came to be graduated, these "colleges" assumed the right to confer degrees upon them, usually with authority -- for example, the College of William and Mary has a Royal Charter from the British monarchy allowing it to confer degrees while Dartmouth College has a charter permitting it to award degrees "as are usually granted in either of the universities, or any other college in our realm of Great Britain."

Contrast this with Europe, where only universities could grant degrees. The leaders of Harvard College (which granted America's first degrees in 1642) might have thought of their college as the first of many residential colleges which would grow up into a New Cambridge university. However, over time, few new colleges were founded there, and Harvard grew and added higher faculties. Eventually, it changed its title to university, but the term "college" had stuck and "colleges" have arisen across the United States.

Eventually, several prominent colleges/universities were started to train Christian ministers. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Brown all started to train preachers in the subjects of Bible and theology. However, now these universities teach theology as a more academic than ministerial discipline.

With the rise of Christian education, renowned seminaries and Bible colleges have continued the original purpose of these universities. Criswell College and Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas; Southern Seminary in Louisville; Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois; and Wheaton College and Graduate School in Wheaton, Illinois are just a few of the institutions that have influenced higher education in Theology in Philosophy to this day.


Origin of U.S. State Colleges: The Morrill Act
In addition to private colleges and universities, the U.S. also has a system of government funded, public universities, also, in many cases, known as State Colleges. This system arose in order to make higher education more easily accessible to the citizenry of the country, specifically to improve agricultural systems by providing training and scholarship in the production and sales of agricultural products,[4] and to provide formal education in “…agriculture, home economics, mechanical arts, and other professions that seemed practical at the time.”[5]

In the 1860s, when this act was established, the original colleges on the east coast, primarily those of the Ivy League and several religious based colleges, were the only form of higher education available, and were often confined only to the children of the elite. A movement arose to bring a form of more practical higher education to the masses, as “…many politicians and educators wanted to make it possible for all young Americans to receive some sort of advanced education.”[6] In 1862 Congress passed a measure that “…made it possible for the new western states to establish colleges for the citizens.”.[7] This was extended to allow all states that had remained with the union during the American Civil War, and eventually all states, to establish such institutions.

Most of the colleges established under the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act have since gone on to become full universities. Some are amongst the elite of the world.

Currently until April 27th the Morrill act is on display at Iowa State University in Morrill Hall.
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