College

In American English all universities are colleges, but all colleges are not universities. Some institutions referred to as colleges (for example community colleges or liberal arts colleges) may not big enough to qualify as universities, or may have a tighter focus to their mission or applicant pool. Other names for colleges are "academy" and "institute", as in Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In certain universities in the United Kingdom (Cambridge, Oxford and Durham), a college is a residence hall and an independent part of a university. Colleges admit their own students, provide accommodation, meals, common rooms, libraries, sports and social facilities. Through the tutorial system they also teach students. Officially, the universities of London and Wales each consist of a number of colleges. However, each "college" is now essentially an independant university. In later years the American meaning of the word has come to be used in general along with the British meaning.

In Australia, the term "college" has a number of meanings:

1. Many private high schools are called "colleges"
2. Formerly, Australia had a large number of university-level tertiary education institutions, which specialized in only one subject area (e.g. Agriculture, Health Sciences, Teaching, etc.), or were smaller than the universities. However, in the late 1980s the Federal government reformed the higher education system, and most of these colleges were taken over by universities. A few however continue to exist independently, such as the Australian Maritime College, and some Theological Colleges.
3. The colleges which were taken over by universities sometimes continued as parts of the universities, retaining "college" in their name. For example, the Cumberland College of Health Sciences, and the Orange Agricultural College, both now parts of the University of Sydney
4. The term "college" is used to refer to residence halls, as in the United Kingdom, but unlikely in the UK they generally do not operate any tutorial system, and do no teaching
5. In some universities, the term "college" is an administrative division of the university (for example, the University of Sydney is divided into the College of Health Sciences, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the College of Sciences and Technology; the individual faculties, such as Arts, Science or Medicine, are each members of one of these colleges)

The German word for college is Hochschule, literally meaning high-school, which can be confusing enough.

See colleges and universities for a list of some famous colleges and universities.