college

In Canadian English, the term college usually refers to a career college, technical, trades, community college, college of applied arts or applied technology, or an applied science school. These are post-secondary institutions granting apprenticeships, citations, certificates, diplomas, and associate's degrees. Terminology In the English-speaking parts of Canada, the term "college" is generally used to refer to vocational schools that provide trade and technical education in various specialized vocational disciplines across specific employment fields. Among the institutions that fall into the "college" category include vocational colleges, career colleges, community colleges, institutes of technology or science, technical schools, colleges of applied arts or applied technology, and in Quebec through collèges d’enseignement général et professionnel. There is a distinction between "college" and "university" in Canada. In conversation, one specifically would say either "They are going to university" (i.e., studying for a four-year bachelor's degree at a university) or "They are going to college" (which may imply enrolling in a vocational school in some parts of the country). In American English, (and in formal British English as well) the word college is especially used for what Canadians would call the undergraduate level of a university, but in popular use it to refers to the entire gestalt of the realm of post-secondary studies, regardless of level of prestige. Canadians, on the other hand, use the term university to mean the pursuit of undergraduate and graduate post-secondary studies exclusively.