College

College (Latin: collegium) is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, or an institution offering vocational education.

In the United States "college" refers to a constituent part of a university, but generally "college" and "university" are used interchangeably, whereas in the United Kingdom, Oceania, South Asia and Southern Africa, "college" may refer to a secondary or high school, a college of further education, a training institution that awards trade qualifications, a higher education provider that does not have university status (often without its own degree-awarding powers), or a constituent part of a university (See this comparison of British and American English educational terminology for further information).

In ancient Rome a collegium was a club or society, a group of people living together under a common set of rules (con- = "together" + leg- = "law" or lego = "I choose" or "I read").

Aside from the modern educational context - nowadays the most common use of "college" - there are various other meanings also derived from the original Latin term, such as Electoral college.

Within higher education, the term can be used to refer to:

A sixth form college or college of further education is an educational institution in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Belize, The Caribbean, Malta, Norway, Brunei, or Southern Africa, among others, where students aged 16 to 19 typically study for advanced school-level qualifications, such as A-levels, BTEC, HND or its equivalent and the International Baccalaureate Diploma, or school-level qualifications such as GCSEs. In Singapore and India, this is known as a junior college. The municipal government of the city of Paris uses the phrase "sixth form college" as the English name for a lycée.

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