What's in a name? College versus University versus Institute versus ???

The ONDs and HNDs are in a variety of programs (example, Town planning, Engineering, Architecture, etc.). The programs comprise of both general education, lower level and upper level specialization courses. An OND maps to an Associates degree, and is made up of the same set of courses that are found in such programs.

 

I think that's typically the connotation of the word 'polytechnic' here in the United States too. But it's kind of informal. There are't a whole lot of American schools with 'polytechnic' in their names and it doesn't name a whole class of schools here like it used to in Britain, pre-1990.

California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo is proud of its hand's-on roots. It teaches all the theory and mathematics that students encounter elsewhere, but at the same time it places great emphasis on integrating all of that theory with real-life laboratory practice. Engineering students participate in serious engineering projects, architecture students actually design buildings, agriculture students run the school's huge farm and ranch operation, process the results and sell it in the university's stores. Designers design, writers write, and biologists and geologists spend a lot of their time out in the field. The school's motto is "learn by doing" and employers (and graduate schools) absolutely love it. They have confidence that new Cal Poly graduates know what they're doing and can perform right out of the box. So as a result, Cal Poly's comparative placement success is very good. (As you can tell, I'm very fond of Cal Poly.)

It's true. American 'colleges' can be very prestigious on the undergraduate level. Places like Amherst College and Williams College in Massachusetts, Carleton College in Minnesota and Pomona College in California have reputations for offering some of the best (and most selective) bachelors programs in the world. Class sizes are small, everyone knows everyone, and personal mentoring is intense. They are definitely competitive with the ivy-league on the undergraduate level and are probably better than schools like Berkeley that are larger, more anonymous and may tend to emphasize graduate students over undergraduates.

I guess that my point is that while 'colleges' are generally less apt to be doctoral-research institutions, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are lesser schools or less prestigious. That isn't always the case and sometimes there might be a loose analogy with French 'ecoles'.

And there are some outliers like Boston College and Dartmouth College that offer well-regarded doctoral programs but retain the 'college' name for historical reasons. (In Boston College's case, the 'Boston University' name was already taken.)

Dartmouth College will always call itself a college and the reason why is an interesting story. It seems that back in the early 19'th century, the State of New Hampshire seized the then-private Dartmouth College, installed new state-appointed trustees, renamed it 'Dartmouth University' and declared it a state university. The old trustees continued on in exile and filed suit against the state. The case continued on until it reached the US Supeme Court, where the private trustees' argument was made by Daniel Webster, a Dartmouth alum. The Supremes found in favor of the private trustees, the state was ordered to back off, and the 'Dartmouth College Case' became the legal foundation for America's extensive (and internationally speaking, almost unique) private university sector. And Dartmouth College has pointedly remained Dartmouth College to this day.

I'm not sure that 'institutes' can always be equated with 'polytechnics'. Here in California we have California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) and the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. These are heavy-duty scientific research schools. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) fits the same pattern. I think that I agree with some of the others who have already said that 'institute' suggests a more specialized and perhaps a more technical institution. But it can still be very scholarly and research-productive.

 

A few years ago, the Wall Street Journal conducted a survey of top business, law, and medical schools, to see which undergraduate programs were most successful at "feeding" their graduates into highly ranked professional programs. The results were adjusted to reflect school size.

The WSJ published a listing of the Top 50 undergraduate schools by this measure:

25 were at "universities"
21 were at "colleges"
2 were at "institutes" (MIT and Caltech)
2 were at "academies" (West Point and Annapolis)

Four "colleges" were among the WSJ's Top 10 "feeders", including Williams (#5), Dartmouth (#7), Amherst (#9), and Swarthmore (#10).

The other Top 10 "feeders" were Harvard (#1), Yale (#2), Princeton (#3), Stanford (#4), Duke (#6), and MIT (#8); MIT is an "institute" and the others are "universities".

Many of the top US "colleges" are virtually unknown internationally. For example, international university rankings typically omit small colleges like Williams or Amherst, even though they rank with the most famous US universities in terms of selectivity or grad school placement.

 

In the U.S., the requirements for the designations "college," "university" and "institute" tend to lie with the states. Different states have different requirements for "colleges" that wish to be renamed "university."

After delivering a presentation on the DBA versus PhD in business at the IACBE Conference, I was contacted by an administrator at a university in Massachusetts who wanted my advice on which non-PhD degree titles had the greatest acceptance, since they wanted to be re-classified as a "university" and the state requirement was that universities had to offer, if I recall correctly, three doctoral programs.

I knew of a number of undergraduate institutions in other states that were allowed by their states to change their names to "university."

 

Six "State Colleges" in Massachusetts were renamed as "State Universities" earlier this year, including Bridgewater State, Fitchburg State, Framingham State, Salem State, Westfield State, and Worcester State.

This is actually the fourth-generation name for these schools; they were originally known as "Normal Schools", then as "State Teachers Colleges", and then as "State Colleges," before becoming "State Universities".

The name change from "College" to "University" apparently had no effect whatsoever on the types of degree programs offered by these schools. Historically, they were not allowed to offer doctoral degrees, except in conjunction with the University of Massachusetts, and this restriction is still in effect.

Massachusetts still has two state "colleges" (the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts) and one state "academy" (the Massachusetts Maritime Academy).

 

Fascinating...the insitution in question in my post was a private college and the state Dept. of Ed informed them of the minimum doctorate rule. The state apparently had a different arragement for their own public state universities (not the first time that I have seen that occur).

 

Some of the best paying degrees are those esarned at Institutions such as MIT, CIT, NJIT, RPI. I would like a degree fome one of these.

I understand that in order to be named a university in the state of NY doctorates must be awarded.

 

Personally, I've long felt that only certain schools should be allowed to use the name "university". These should be:
-- B&M
-- RA
-- Have terminal degrees of at least bachelor level
-- Be at least non-profit, but if all else have some altruistic purpose (e.g. philosophical, religious, public service)

This doesn't mean I diss schools that currently operate and use "university" in their names that don't meet their criteria. This is just my personal preference as far as nomenclature.

 

I would have to agree with your assessment.