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During a conversation between college-aged students, the words college and university may be used interchangeably.
But which one is correct? Is there a difference?
Does it really matter?
Honestly, for many people it doesn’t really matter which one you use because they’ll understand you. But if you’re an academic or writing papers and need to be accurate, then understanding the distinction can be important.
Here’s the short and simple answer.
College
It’s generally a smaller institution that only offers undergraduate degrees. Colleges generally offer 4 year courses but they can offer 2 years as well; associates and bachelors.
University
These are institutions that have both undergraduate and graduate degree options. Sometimes they even have more specialized schools like ones for medical and law degrees. Many of these universities allow for you to combine your degrees to cut down some of your time overall.
Universities generally offer a wider range of classes because they have a much larger student body, but this is not always the case.
How does a school become a university?
Collegerank.net broke it down nicely into 4 key requirements.
“Organization – It must have a graduate studies program and its associated programs plus they must be separate from the undergraduate program and the entire organization itself. It must also have staff that has the primary responsibility for administering the graduate and professional programs.
Program – It must have an undergraduate studies program that leads to a bachelor’s degree in a wide range of academic subjects plus a graduate studies program that lead to advanced degrees in a minimum of three different academic or professional fields.
Resources – It must be able to financially support its graduate and professional programs and have the facilities and equipment required to exhibit the level of work needed in both.
Accreditation – It must be accredited and depending on the state, possibly licensed and incorporated within the state.”
But some colleges do offer some graduate programs and older colleges are branching out but choose to keep the name due to alumni pressure.
A university can be made up of various colleges as well. So you can have a Business College and Nursing College that are part of the larger University.
So at heart, the difference is pretty slight and doesn’t terribly matter in a coversation. But, the more you know!
