College vs. University

The terms “college” and “university” are often used interchangeably; let’s talk about what each of these terms means and how that should inform your college search.

What is a college?

A college is a higher education institution that offers undergraduate degrees and/or certificates. A distinction people often make is between 4-year colleges and 2-year colleges. 2-year colleges include community colleges, technical and vocational colleges, career colleges, and more. 4-year colleges are most often what people refer to when they talk about “college” or “university”.

What is a university?

A university is a larger institution that offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees in a wide range of fields. Universities will often have a 4-year college embedded within the larger university that educates undergraduate students.

So what’s the difference?

Let’s consider an example. You’re a high school student looking at Pomona College and UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). Pomona College offers a 4-year undergraduate program; UCLA also offers a 4-year undergraduate program, in addition to many graduate programs spanning many fields of study. Both of these have undergraduate programs, so is there really a difference?

Universities tend to be larger institutions because of the multiple degree programs they offer. This means that there may be more resources and paths to choose from, but there are often more students which can lead to larger class sizes. Some of your classes might also be taught by graduate students instead of professors. At universities, especially ones more geared towards research, professors might be focused on their research, and teaching is only their second priority (caveat: many professors at universities love teaching).

Colleges tend to be smaller and are solely focused on undergraduate education. A term you will often hear is “liberal arts college”. These schools focus on the “liberal arts”, which means that they want all students to have a broad base of learning in addition to their field of study. Practically, this means that most liberal arts schools have a core curriculum that students must take, likely including math, science, history, language, literature, and philosophy.

What actually matters?

At the end of the day, college vs. university is more of a semantic difference; there are great colleges, and there are great universities (with undergraduate programs). While this article describes some of the main differences, there are always going to be exceptions. Sometimes universities have smaller class sizes and incredible teachers, sometimes smaller colleges have large lectures - there’s no agreed-upon definition of what colleges and universities should look like.

The main thing you should take away from this is that college and university are terms that are and can be used almost interchangeably, and the 4-year undergraduate degree programs at both are more likely to more similar than they are different. Make sure you are judging colleges by their attributes - not their titles! Just because “college” or “university” is in the name does not mean that the education they offer to undergraduates looks a certain way. Keep that in mind as you build your college lists!