Higher Education: What’s the difference between ‘college’ and ‘university’?
I was asked to answer this question on the website quora.com
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Previous writers have already made the simple distinction between a college and university clear. “The difference between a college and a university is that a college just offers a collection of degrees in one specific area while a university is a collection of colleges. When you go to a university you are going to be graduating from one of their colleges, such as the business college.”
Therefore, my job is to complicate it a bit. Saul Kripke is one of the brightest people on the planet (His IQ and rapid move to prof at Princeton are legendary).
His introduction into philosophy of the concept of a rigid designator might prove useful to answer your question. This concept basically says that the name of something refers it in all its possible modes of being even if that something changes over time. Why am I telling you this?
Here’s an example. One of the top colleges in the US is named: The College of William and Mary. When it was founded and existed over a long period of time it was what the other writers define as a college-- A stand-alone place rather than a set of schools under a larger frame. But that has now changed: here is the list of schools and degrees at the College of William and Mary:
Academics:
• Programs in Arts & Sciences and our four graduate/professional schools: Business, Education, Law and Marine Science
• Over 30 undergraduate programs, 23 graduate and professional degree programs in Arts & Sciences, Business, Education, Law and Marine Science
• Degrees conferred: B.A., B.B.A., B.S., Ed.D., J.D., LL.M., M.A., M.A.C., M.B.A., M.Ed., M.P.P., M.S., Ph.D., Psy.D.
According to the definition of a college, the College of William and Mary is not a college. But its name, following the rules of rigid designator, has stayed the same.
Why not change the name? It is a brand thing in part and it would upset the alumni. I say all this as there are a number of colleges these days that are named colleges but in fact have schools within it that would make them, according to a standard definition, a university.
An analogy might help to make the point one more time. There are rock groups out and about and touring these days who may have only one original member, but the group of mostly new musicians is still called by the well-known name. The rigid designator concept defines how this name remains the same despite significant changes to what it actually is.
So when you look at colleges in the US you might be surprised to find that a number of them are not much different than universities except in the name. You will need, to put it in perspective, to look at what the school now offers in terms of degree programs and undergraduate and graduate schools and programs. While a rose by any other name may still smell as sweet, this does not always mean a rose is still a rose is still a rose.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
A rigid designator designates the same object in all possible worlds in which that object exists and never designates anything else. This technical concept in the philosophy of language has critical consequences felt throughout philosophy. In their fullest generality, the consequences are metaphysical and epistemological. Whether a statement's designators are rigid or non-rigid may determine whether it is necessarily true, necessarily false, or contingent. This metaphysical status is sometimes out of accord with what one would expect given a statement's apparent epistemological status as a posteriori or a priori. Statements affected include central ones under investigation in philosophical subdisciplines from the philosophy of science to mind to ethics and aesthetics. Hence, much of the discussion in various subdisciplines of philosophy is explicitly or implicitly framed around the distinction between rigid and non-rigid designators.
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