There are over 4 400 universities and colleges in the United States. In USA the term formally denotes a constituent part of university but in popular usage the word college is the genetic term for any post secondary undergraduate education. Americans go to college after high school whether or regardless the specific institution is formally a college or a university. Some of the students choose to dual-enroll by taking college classes while still in high school. Both the word and its derivatives are the standard terms used for description of the institutions and experiences associated with American post secondary undergraduate education. Before taking classes students must pay for college. Some of them borrow the money via loans and some fund their educations with loans, grants or scholarships. Colleges vary in terms of degree, size and length of stay. Junior or community colleges that are 2-year institutions usually offer an associate’s degree and four-year colleges offer bachelor’s degree.
In the United States all the four-year institutions emphasizing a liberal arts curriculum are known as liberal arts colleges. Law, medicine, theology and divinity were about the only form of higher education available in the USA until the 20th century. The schools have traditionally emphasized instruction at the undergraduate level although advanced research may still occur at these institutions. The term university primarily designates institutions providing undergraduate and graduate education while there is no national standard in the United States. A university typically has as its core and its largest internal division an undergraduate college teaching a liberal arts curriculum, also culminating in a bachelor’s degree. In addition, one or more schools engaged in both teaching graduate classes and in research what often distinguishes a university is having. Often these would be called a School of Law or School of Medicine. Usage of the term varies among the states. For example, in 1996 Georgia changed all of its 4-year institutions previously designated as colleges to universities, and all of its vocational technology schools to technical colleges. The term do not exhaust all possible titles for an American institution of higher education.
As in United Kingdom “ college” is used for a constituent semi-autonomous part of a large university but generally organized on academic rather than residential lines. At many institutions the undergraduate portion of the university can be briefly referred to as the “college” while at others each of the faculties may be called the college, the college of nursing, engineering and so forth. The founders of the first institutions of higher education in USA were graduates of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. The small institutions they founded would not have seemed to them like universities. In fact they were tiny and did not offer the higher degrees in theology and medicine. Furthermore they were not composed of several small colleges. These colleges assumed the right to confer degrees when the first students came to be graduated.
