COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY?

I have now commented a couple of times on the way all sorts of colleges get “verbally upgraded” to being called universities. I seem to recollect that Sinclair Lewis had a satirical comment on that in “Babbit” many years ago too. Matthew Cowie comments:

I found this link which kind of goes into the differences between a college and a university in the US. My alma mater has only 1600 undergrad students, but calls itself a University because it has a law school and a separate undergraduate business school, in addition to offering far more majors than most colleges (hence making it more like a University). I think small schools that call themselves universities always get asked why they are a university (because the word invokes images of Division 1 football and at least 10,000 students), especially by parents when they visit with their children, so they are going to have some kind of answer.

I myself take the traditional British view that in a university those who teach are all supposed to have some involvement in research and/or writing as well.

********************************