1) University
One of you asked for more clarification about the difference between a college and a university. Unfortunately, the difference is not well-defined, and often the same schools could just as easily be called a college as a university.
In the United States, college and university refer to basically the same thing - a degree-granting institute of higher education.
In general, a college is undergraduate-focused, while a university also includes graduate-level studies (master's and PhD programs) and research components (ie: Harvard College is the undergraduate component of Harvard University).
But in everyday speech, you'll hear Americans use the word "college" to refer to the level of education after high school. If you're coming to the U.S. for higher education, you can look at schools that are called colleges or universities.
You might also hear the word “college” used to describe academic subdivisions within a university (the Washington College of Law is the law school of American University). And the word college is also used in the term “community college,” which is a school that offers two-year degrees as opposed to four-year degrees.
2) Associate's Degree
A two-year undergraduate degree, typically awarded by community colleges and junior colleges. Some associate’s degrees are typically used as transfer degrees, meaning that after completing the two-year degree, the student would transfer their credits towards a four-year bachelor’s degree. Other associate’s degrees are career-oriented and “terminal,” meaning they train a student to pursue a certain career.
That's the technical definition, but the person who asked us to define associate's degree also wanted to know what it means socially to get an associate's degree before, or rather than, a bachelor's degree. That's a little more complicated.
An associate's degree is a two-year degree, so it takes less time than a bachelor's degree to attain and is therefore lower on the scale of academic achievement. However, that doesn't mean there's any sort of stigma associated with it.
People get associate's degrees for a lot of different reasons. They may be trying to save money (community colleges are typically much cheaper than four-year colleges), or they may not have had the grades in high school to get into the college they wanted. They may have other priorities that make a four-year degree too much of a commitment (many people will study for associate's degrees after working for a few years after high school), or the degree may be what's required to pursue a particular career.
So, there you go. Keep suggesting words for us to define, and visit the glossary to see what's been submitted so far.
P.S. - EducationUSA reminded me that they have a glossary of terms as well. It's different than ours, so worth checking out.
What other words do you want us to define? Use the Glossary Suggestion Form below or leave your suggestions in the comments.
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