University or College, What's the Difference?

I remember that when I was looking at the various schools I was considering attending, being struck with what I thought was a simple question. That question was "What is the difference between a university and a college?" It turns out that this is not as simple of a question as I originally thought. It turns out that there are a variety of different definitions available for the words "university" and "college," most of which are going to boil down to two main elements—purpose and size.

Generally speaking, in the United States there is very little overall difference between a college and a university, at least academically speaking. Where there is a difference is in the size. In the United States, most universities are larger (much, much larger) than a college. In fact, universities are quite often usually made up of several smaller colleges. Some examples of universities that are made up of smaller colleges are Harvard University (which includes the Harvard Business School, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Harvard Divinity School, etc.), University of Utah (which has College of Architecture & Planning, College of Health, College of Law, etc.), and Stanford (which also has colleges specializing in business, earth sciences, law and medicine to name only a few).

In addition, when you attend college there is more of an emphasis (however slight) on the teaching staff making sure that you understand the material being taught. One way that you could look at this is colleges are a way of preparing to attend a university. In a university it is going to be your responsibility to understand the basics of the material, and then grasping the concepts that are being taught. What this means is that the professors are simply introducing the concepts to you, and you are the one who has to make sure that you know what those concepts mean.

Finally, as if there weren't already enough differences between a college and a university, there is still one more. The main focus of universities as a whole is to conduct research. While it is true that colleges do conduct research, it is nothing like the research that tends to be achieved at universities. Some examples of the type of research in question would be the University of Chicago, where they helped conduct research for the Manhattan Project.

In conclusion, in the United States there is very little overall difference between universities and colleges. In fact some of the most famous colleges, such as Dartmouth College or Chicago College, are actually universities. What this means is that there is also an element of tradition to the naming of our institutions of higher learning, and some times even marketing.