A 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, an institution offering vocational education, or a secondary school.
In most of the world, a college may be a high school or secondary 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. In the United States, a college may offer undergraduate programs – either as an independent institution or as the undergraduate program of a university – or it may be a residential college of a university or a community college, referring to (primarily public) higher education institutions that aim to provide affordable and accessible education, usually limited to two-year associate degrees.[1] The word is generally also used as a synonym for a university in the US.[2] A college in some countries such as France, Belgium, and Switzerland provides secondary education. However, the Collège de France is a prestigious advanced research institute in Paris.[citation needed]
The word "college" is from the Latin verb lego, legere, legi, lectum, "to collect, gather together, pick", plus the preposition cum, "with",[4] thus meaning "selected together". Thus "colleagues" are literally "persons who have been selected to work together". In ancient Rome a collegium was a "body, guild, corporation united in colleagueship; of magistrates, praetors, tribunes, priests, augurs; a political club or trade guild".[5] Thus a college was a form of corporation or corporate body, an artificial legal person (body/corpus) with its own legal personality, with the capacity to enter into legal contracts, to sue and be sued. In mediaeval England there were colleges of priests, for example in chantry chapels; modern survivals include the Royal College of Surgeons in England (originally the Guild of Surgeons Within the City of London), the College of Arms in London (a body of heralds enforcing heraldic law), an electoral college (to elect representatives), etc., all groups of persons "selected in common" to perform a specified function and appointed by a monarch, founder or other person in authority. As for the modern "college of education", it was a body created for that purpose, for example Eton College was founded in 1440 by letters patent of King Henry VI for the constitution of a college of Fellows, priests, clerks, choristers, poor scholars, and old poor men, with one master or governor, whose duty it shall be to instruct these scholars and any others who may resort thither from any part of England in the knowledge of letters, and especially of grammar, without payment".[6]
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.[8]
In some national education systems, secondary schools may be called "colleges" or have "college" as part of their title.
In Australia the term "college" is applied to any private or independent (non-government) primary and, especially, secondary school as distinct from a state school. Melbourne Grammar School, Cranbrook School, Sydney and The King's School, Parramatta are considered colleges.