University? College? [The?]

[ElyseC]

Now tell me: Why do the English say someone is “in hospital”? We say “in the hospital” here.Similarly, they also say go to university and we say go to college yet we also say someone's at or attending college. I wonder how this difference came about.

Here in the States university is used when referring to a specific institution, while college can be both a general term and used specifically when it follows an article.

[Michael Rowley]

Elyse:

they [the English] also say go to university and we say go to college

I think we also said 'to college' commonly once, but have become more sophisticated: it's something of a class thing. A college is actually a collection of students and their pupils, whereas a university grants degrees, but with so many universities that have only one college, the distinction has become blurred. Most European universities have never had colleges, which started of in Oxford and later Cambridge as glorified boarding houses.

[ElyseC]

I think we also said 'to college' commonly once, but have become more sophisticated: it's something of a class thing. A college is actually a collection of students and their pupils, whereas a university grants degrees, but with so many universities that have only one college, the distinction has become blurred. Most European universities have never had colleges, which started of in Oxford and later Cambridge as glorified boarding houses.Very interesting. I've detected a difference between us in the meaning of college, but didn't understand it until now. I first noticed the difference 24 years ago when the movie "Chariots of Fire" was released. It seemed the young men were all attending the same university, but kept using college in a way we (or at least I) don't here.

In the States we have both colleges and universities, both of which grant degrees. Some colleges are 2-year affairs that offer "Associate" level degrees, others offer the same 4-year and graduate level degrees as universities. I can't tell you what separates a college from a university, but there are many universities that started out labeled as colleges. I have no idea what inspired or qualified the name change, but I can think of two near where we used to live in eastern Los Angeles County that made the change during the 2-3 decades we lived there.

[Michael Rowley]

Elyse:

In the States we have both colleges and universities

I know that in the USA there are a number of colleges that provide degree courses in a limited range of subjects, usually those that do not cost much to teach, but do not have research facilities, so cannot offer higher degrees. But some may have advanced to offering post-graduate courses while retaining the name 'college'.

Higher education was a lot more varied in the USA than it was in the British Isles or continental Europe, but the picture has changed, particularly in Britain. When I studied in the early fifties, less than one in ten school leavers in England could attend a university (and we all got jobs afterwards), but now it's nearer one in two.

[Franca]

My understanding is that traditionally a four-year college is a single institution providing undergraduate degrees: Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science and so forth. (A two-year college would provide associate degrees or certificates; students would transfer to a four-year college from there to receive a bachelor's degree.)

A university comprises multiple institutions providing various graduate degrees in addition to the undergraduate degrees. Students apply separately to these institutions. If someone simply said to me that he attended "Harvard", I would assume he meant the undergraduate institution. He would say he attended "Harvard Law School" or that he "studied law at Harvard" if that were the case. All seven of the Ivy League "Colleges", for example, are universities today - although Dartmouth continues to call itself "Dartmouth College" in spite of the existence of the Dartmouth Medical School, the Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck Business School.

[ElyseC]

Higher education was a lot more varied in the USA than it was in the British Isles or continental Europe,...Yes, well, I guess we Yanks like to "roll our own" regarding most everything. <g>

I don't know that this is true, but have always figured that the number of students played a part in whether the institution was a college or university.

[ElyseC]

Ah, I wonder if the traditions of the USA's right coast are closer to those of the old motherland than those of the left half of the country.

[Michael Rowley]

Elyse:

I wonder if the traditions of the USA's right coast are closer to those of the old motherland

Bound to be, with 'improvements'. Probably some of the people that founded universities East of the Mississippi were Oxford or Cambridge graduates, Scottish graduates, or Dublin graduates.

[ElyseC]

Bound to be, with 'improvements'. Probably some of the people that founded universities East of the Mississippi were Oxford or Cambridge graduates, Scottish graduates, or Dublin graduates.Yes, that makes sense.

[Stephen Owades]

My understanding is that traditionally a four-year college is a single institution providing undergraduate degrees: Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science and so forth. (A two-year college would provide associate degrees or certificates; students would transfer to a four-year college from there to receive a bachelor's degree.)

A university comprises multiple institutions providing various graduate degrees in addition to the undergraduate degrees. Students apply separately to these institutions. If someone simply said to me that he attended "Harvard", I would assume he meant the undergraduate institution. He would say he attended "Harvard Law School" or that he "studied law at Harvard" if that were the case. All seven of the Ivy League "Colleges", for example, are universities today - although Dartmouth continues to call itself "Dartmouth College" in spite of the existence of the Dartmouth Medical School, the Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck Business School.Harvard maintains a distinction between Harvard University (the overall institution, including undergraduate and graduate schools) and Harvard College (the undergraduate institution). But in Oxford or Cambridge the undergraduate portions of the university are divided into several "colleges" rather than one. Harvard's semi-equivalent to the English "college" is called a "house," which is more than just a residential unit.

The trade school down the river from Harvard that I attended, MIT, is formally the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology"--neither college nor university.