The aspect of the American use of the word "college" that seems the most confusing to British people is that it refers to both institutions using "college" in their name and to the undergraduate portions of institutions using "university" in their names. This use is not colloquial, and it is in fact not even confusing as long as one realizes that the same level of education (undergraduate) is always meant. In British usage, in contrast, "college" can refer to different levels of education and different kinds of institutions (see United Kingdom section above), as a result of which even many British people are confused by the many different British uses of the word.

Where a British person would say "go to university", Americans instead say "go to college" or frequently "go to school", even when referring to an institution officially called a "university", as long as they are not referring to graduate or first-professional studies in the same school. In the United Kingdom, aside from usage in reference to collegiate universities as detailed above, to attend "college" would usually be accepted as meaning one attends a technical college or a specific sixth form institution. (Most state schools and independent school in the United Kingdom have sixth forms, but there are a number of sixth form specific institutions).

However, in the U.S., students at universities still refer to them as "college", but only when referring to their undergraduate studies and students. (Otherwise, the term "graduate school" is always used, except in reference to "business school" or a first-professional school such as "law school" or "medical school".) The institution that administers many standardized admissions tests in the U.S. is known as the College Board because it originally only provided tests for undergraduate admissions. So, to Americans, the word "college" refers to an undergraduate education, while "university" is a much less common catch-all term for both undergraduate and graduate studies.

The origin of the U.S. usage

The founders of the first institutions of higher education in the United States 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 ? they were tiny and did not offer the higher degrees in medicine and theology. Furthermore, they were not composed of several small colleges. Instead, the new institutions felt like the Oxbridge colleges they were used to ? small communities, housing and feeding their students, with instruction from residential tutors (as in the United Kingdom, described above). When the first students came to be graduated, these "colleges" assumed the right to confer degrees upon them, usually with authority -- for example, the College of William and Mary has a Royal Charter from the British monarchy allowing it to confer degrees while Dartmouth College has a charter permitting it to award degrees "as are usually granted in either of the universities, or any other college in our realm of Great Britain."

Contrast this with Europe, where only universities could grant degrees. The leaders of Harvard College (which granted America's first degrees in 1642) might have thought of their college as the first of many residential colleges which would grow up into a New Cambridge university. However, over time, few new colleges were founded there, and Harvard grew and added higher faculties. Eventually, it changed its title to university, but the term "college" had stuck and "colleges" had sprung up all over the United States.

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