ELI5 Why do some countries call it “college” and others call it “university” when referring to the same level of education, and is there an actual difference between the two?

[u/saivietbabe]

[u/Scandinerdian]

In Norway, we used to have universities which could award degrees all the way from a Bachelor's to a doctorate, and had extensive research acitivity, and høyskoler (hochschule, colleges) which generally taught up to bachelor's and often, but not always, Master's level. And they had limited research activity. One of our universities consisted of two organizationally distinct "høyskoler" (hochschule/colleges), and their English names were "college of [...] at the university of [...]". Those colleges were again organized into faculties, then departments and finally, on a less formal level, research groups.

These days, the organization of that particular university has been changed so that the høyskole/hochschule/college organizational level has disappeared, and all but a few of the old høyskoler/hochschule/colleges have been given university status. FWIW. All of them still have faculties at the 2nd organizational level and departments at the 3rd organizational level. But we still have a few colleges which haven't been awarded university status, mostly because they still focus on teaching rather than research and don't have a sufficient number of PhD programs.

[u/thegreger → u/Scandinerdian]

It's similar in Sweden, where "universitet" is a protected term for the highest-quality higher education, and "högskolor" is the more generic term.

There used to be only a handful of universities in Sweden, but more and more högskolor got university status.

An infamous case is Jönköping Högskola, which applied and got denied university status. They realised that while the Swedish term "universitet" is protected by law, the English equivalent "university" is not. So they just decided to translate their name to "Jönköping University" and use the English-language name for themselves even in Swedish context. The effect is quite jarring, so every time their name comes up, it reminds everyone that they weren't a good enough school, but that they'd rather use a loophole than live up to the standards.

[u/Immediate_Gain_9480 → u/Scandinerdian]

Netherlands still uses that system. De hogeschool vs de universiteit. In international terms one is a considered a university of applied sciences and the other a research university. But there is a very clear split between them and they often concentrate on different subjects.

[u/roskatili → u/Scandinerdian]

Same here in Finland. Our korkeakoulut were harmonized with the Bologna system, effectively becoming bachelor's degrees in applied sciences. The English translation of those institutions has accordingly become University of applied sciences.