I wanted to be sure before starting my quest of tagging all universities in Morocco. When should I use amenity=university or amenity=college? The wiki pages (which are extremely unclear) say the first one is for “higher education” while the second one is for “further education” or “continuing education”… what does that even mean? Another use case is that the first one designates institutions offering a wide range of courses such as business, sciences, art, medicine… while the latter is for more specialized institutions such as business schools or art schools.
However when trying to verify this by searching for some popular universities, I found some contradictory data: NEOMA Business School is tagged as amenity=university despite being… a business school. Same for HEC Montreal, ESADE, London Business School.
Imo, it would depend on the definition of the words “college” and “university”. For example, from Merriam-Webster:
College:
1 a: an independent institution of higher learning offering a course of general studies leading to a bachelor’s degree
[…]
b: an institution offering instruction usually in a professional, vocational, or technical field
[…]
University:
1: an institution of higher learning providing facilities for teaching and research and authorized to grant academic degrees
specifically: one made up of an undergraduate division which confers bachelor’s degrees and a graduate division which comprises a graduate school and professional schools each of which may confer master’s degrees and doctorates
From this, I would tag something that only offers up to undergrad as amenity=college, and something that offers graduate amenity=university.
“Leading to a bachelor’s degree” is unclear whether it means conferring a bachelor, or a per-requsite for it. A full bachelor programme is surely offered by a =university , except perhaps debating on how some further education institutions can offer top-up degrees often in cooperation with other universities.
a place for specialized education after the age of 16 or 18, where people study and train to get technical skills or knowledge for a particular type of job COLLEGE | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
The difference you want might be expressed by the terminology of teaching vs research univeristy, but that’s usually the focus only. What examples of institutions are offering bacehlor only, without postgrad?
I don’t know where you find such descriptions, or the context. It doesn’t matter if a business or art school named or referred to as a “college”. It it gives out bachelors, it’s a =universtiy
This is correct, many countries have different educational systems although within the course of globalization they get more adapted to each other. You can find lots of pages in the web explaining the differences, by searching for “college vs. university”, one example is here:
The main difference appears to be the background of the education offered. In a university it should be more scientific, in a college more pragmatical and job related wereas there are many overlapping areas.
In Germany we do have exactly the same differense between “Universiät” and “Fachhochschule” but also here the educational targets are not clearly delineated from each other and became more overlapping specially within the past 20-30 years.
A good hint may be the name of the institute itself. If it bears “university” in it’s name I would tag it as university, if it is called a “school of …” I would go for college.
Websters is can be a bit dodgy for a project that mostly uses British English, but in this case it’s probably not too bad. Casual American use often uses college as a catch-all for everything post-secondary up to an including universities which confuses things considerably.
The current state of the wiki page for amenity=college seems to intend its use for training that is more vocational in nature. Courses that are tailored towards a specific job but not necessarily more academically advanced than the ‘previous stage’, just more specialised. I think in many cases these are things that you would not have historically expected to involve getting a degree, but sometimes do today.
On the other hand an amenity=university would normally be expected to be more academic and would almost always do post-graduate studies.
The line between these things is quite blurry and there are all manner of different systems and translation difficulties.
Considering you are making suggestions based on English, the naming of schools isn’t good for taking literally. When you look at the list of Nobel economics prize winners for some anecdotes, aside from LSE (part of UoL together with London Business School, and 2 other “School”), there’s the Stockholm School of Economics, and The New School (renamed from New School University previously). Another famous one around is Cophenhagen School of Business. They are likely all described and advertised as universities.
To answer more directly, most of the prominent universities in question are indeed named “University”. The “Business School” is a business school similar to the above. Considering the language, references might be sought from French. List of universities in Morocco - Wikipedia
Identifying a common terminology, in HEC Montreal, and HEM Business School, presumably “HE” is “hautes études” for “higher studies”. So these should be =university from this function. Others with “École” “School” should not be =college either.
I made a suggestion based on definitions for “college” and “university” to be found on various websites. And if one is not sure about the character of a certain institute, a helpful hint may be to look for the institutes name - that is what I wrote and it works in most cases. It does not mean that there may not be universities having “school” in their name.
That distinction is fairly clear to me, in British English, which OSM mostly uses. But the Wiki pages could do a much better job at explaining this distinction to an international audience, and it’s also far from clear that real OSM tagging follows this distinction.
As a rule of thumb, if it gives out academic degrees such as a bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD, it’s a higher education institution (amenity=university).
Further education (amenity=college according to the Wiki) is basically a catch-all term for institutions that you attend after school that aren’t universities. This includes places where you study after school but before university (sixth form colleges) and places that you go to instead of university, that offer more vocational (job-related) qualifications (in subjects like construction, hairdressing, business…)
We can try to follow these conventions and translate them to other countries. If we do so, then for example in Germany, a Fachhochschule is clearly an amenity=university. An amenity=college in Germany would be something like a Berufsschule or a Fachoberschule.
But again, it’s far from clear without looking at the data if this is actually how the tags have been used or if this is just wishful thinking by a Wiki author.
I am very much sure that this is the case because “college” already has different meanings in different english speaking countries and gets further confusion added by trying to adopt it to further/higher education institutions in other languages.
In fact, very many colleges do not just offer nondegree further education as described in the wiki but also higher education with graduate programs. See also the definition for higher education in Wikipedia:
whereas universities offer undergraduate as well as postgraduate programs. Both are part of higher education.
That said, the definition in our Wiki does not reflect the real life definition in large parts of the world and this always causes problems, leading to mistagging in cases where mappers do not study the wiki before going ahead.
What the World Bank means is further education as found in that “college” belongs to tertiary education, together with higher ed. It doesn’t mean those “colleges” provide “higher education with graduate programs”.
“College” is first the American English term for universities. I can’t see a strong conclusion from here. The article is referring to liberal arts college. Ignoring how some have postgrad, liberal arts colleges are usually compared with universities for the purpose of bachelor. The article lists community colleges and vocational colleges as examples alongside, which have too much difference in the qualification level from liberal arts college.
Perhaps half of the prominent examples are named “University” List of liberal arts colleges in the United States - Wikipedia
What are “these colleges” then? It seems the undergrad term is the problem here. Community and vocational colleges are usually up to associates. Universities at bachelor level. So they don’t offer the same undergrad. Undergraduate commonly refers to bachelors in universities, hence the confusion.
And if you have read my reply above, you will know the article is casually lumping liberal arts college together with community or technical colleges, which are very different “colleges”. The former is considered as a counterpart of, and commonly named “University”.
Many LAC seemingly without postgrad are currently =university
I am getting tired of this nitpicking. If the bachelor degrees offered by some colleges are not as good as bachelor degrees offered by universities that is fine with me. I am not going to waste more time with this.
To simplify this a bit, since it’s different in every country, perhaps I may offer a (while imperfect) solution that will manage to fully please no one (the goal in a great debate):
Trade School is a higher educational institution with the goal of professional certification.
College is a higher educational institution which gives degrees to graduates and post-graduates up to the doctoral and postdoctoral levels.
University is a collection of colleges with a common identity and shared space. While a university may have a college of business and a college of engineering, the overall branding of “University of X” applies to both and their shared areas such as student housing and student unions. Degrees are associated with universities but given by their respective college within the university.
Sorry but this is definitely not in line with my understanding of these terms in Canadian English as well as my understanding of the OSM tags. A college is not a part of a university.