DIFFERENTIATING BETWEEN A COLLEGE AND A UNIVERSITY
There are generally three options available to a secondary (high) school graduate. One is, in case a student didn’t pass his/her school certificate exams, to retake them. The exam is called Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) in Nigeria and General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) in the UK. Second, attend a Further Education (FE) college, these offer Cambridge A-Levels, or other Pre-degree programmes. The last option which holds only after a student has satisfied all the requirements for admission is to make the choice of a University or College to attend. The major point for this article, is,
“if there is an actual difference between a College and a University. Usually these two words are used interchangeably as one, thus their dichotomy is largely undefined.”
College and university programs begin in the twelfth year of school in Nigeria, in the thirteenth year of school in the USA, and in the fifteenth year of school in England. This puts the range of majority of undergraduates in the three countries between ages fifteen and twenty-one. Students who get in around the age of 21 are referred to as, ‘mature’ students.
In the USA, a two-year college offers an associate’s degree, as well as certificates. A four-year college or university offers a bachelor’s degree (baccalaureate). Generally, schools that offer these degrees are called ‘undergraduate’ schools. In Nigeria, colleges include polytechnics, colleges of education, technical colleges etc. In Nigerian polytechnics a student is awarded both the Ordinary National Diploma (OND) and Higher National Diploma (HND) after two years of study for each diploma. In the college of education, the certificate awarded is the Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE).
A ‘university’ however is a group of schools for studies after secondary school. There is typically the ‘undergraduate’ and ‘graduate (postgraduate)’ subdivisions in a University. One of the schools in a university is a college where students receive a bachelor’s degree. Graduate schools are where students receive postgraduate degrees. A university, therefore offers both the bachelor’s degree and postgraduate degrees such as the master’s (M.Sc. and M.A) and doctorate (Ph.D.).
Usually most of the colleges are located within university campuses. Colleges in a university can also be called ‘faculties’. In some Nigerian universities there could be several faculties and the term ‘college’ is reserved only for medicine related courses. Each of these faculties function similar to a college, although covering smaller surface areas and have fewer departments. University colleges could sometimes not be situated within the main campus. This is not unusual with Medicine and Engineering related courses.
Sometimes, the line between college and university can be largely undefined. For example, in the USA, there are colleges awarding postgraduate degrees in specific courses and fields. Making a definite differentiation between both words difficult. However, in the USA, students generally refer to baccalaureate awarding institutions (whether college or university) as ‘colleges’, reserving ‘university’ for postgraduate degree awarding ones only. However, the conclusion one can make is that, the scope of a university’s postgraduate degree awarding power is broader than that of a college.
