College / university (was: branch of 'Omission of definite article')

Thu Jan 21 14:06:09 UTC 2010

In the US, of course, we (or at least some of us) do things
differently from the home country.

Colleges have Houses (or at least Harvard, the ancestor of almost all
American colleges, does).  The University is something larger, having
specialty "schools", like medicine, engineering, law, etc.

And (saying nothing new or surprising), if an inquiring adult asks
"and where are you going to school?", the student answers "I'm at
college now", not "at the college" (nor "at university" -- perhaps
because the university is too diverse; the questioner would be left
wondering which speciality).  "Habituation", or continuing action or
place?  But if a friend tweets asking "where are you going to be
today", the student might answer "I'm at the college". Momentary
place?  (Although saying "at (the) college" is perhaps too imprecise
a response to both questions, I think the absence/presence of "the" is right.)

And surely a Harvard student would say "I'm at Hoar House", not "I'm
at the Hoar House" -- that would mean something entirely different.

And at my private (the US meaning -- that is, not government-run)
school, I went through all of sixth form in one year.  First form was
7th grade, sixth form was the last year of high school.  Apparently
my school went through the forms twice as fast as Damian's
example.  Or perhaps an external observer would say we were slow
(dumb), and had to repeat grades -- the elementary school grades were
called first through sixth (grades); the junior/senior high school
grades were again called first through sixth (forms).

Just one question for Damian -- if his sister's school had 12 years
in 6 pairs of lower and upper, what were the remaining 2 years of the
14 between 4 and 18 called?  "Lower" and "upper" kindergarten?  :-)

Joel

At 1/21/2010 06:47 AM, Damien Hall wrote:
>Benjamin commented that he's never heard the phrase 'at university' to
>describe being in higher education, at least on the West coast of the
>States. I think that's a general difference between AmE on the one hand
>(here including Canada?) and BrE / Irish English on the other. My wife
>(from NJ), who also works at the University, has had to consciously learn
>the phrase 'at University' for talking about that here.
>
>For the education you get between the ages of 18 and about 22, we (at least
>in BrE) say 'at university' and not 'at/in college'. This is no doubt
>connected to the fact that very few of the educational institutions here
>that give post-18 education are called X College - the vast majority are X
>University. On the other hand, quite a few such institutions in North
>America are X College (though I wouldn't like to say whether the BrE
>expression arises because of the names of our institutions of higher ed, or
>_vice versa_).
>
>Since we use 'at university' for being a student post-18, there's a gap for
>a meaning for the expression 'at college', and (in BrE at least) it is more
>likely to refer to institutions of further education (ages 16-18). These
>two years of schooling are often handled as the last two years in a school
>where you have been since age 11 (a 'secondary school', 'grammar school',
>'academy', etc), but it is also common for such schools to be for ages
>11-16 only. The separate institutions for ages 16-18 are often called
>'colleges' or, more fully, 'sixth-form colleges'.*
>
>There's the further wrinkle that, at least at Oxbridge, 'in College' means
>'physically at one's College of allegiance / residence etc'. So one is
>asked whether one will be 'dining in College', 'living in College', etc,
>and classes are either 'in College' or not. I don't know whether this usage
>extends to other UK Collegiate universities (Durham, York, Lancaster, etc),
>but I suspect not, as the Colleges elsewhere don't mean quite as much as
>they do at Oxbridge. I am at York at the moment, for example (but I'm not a
>student, so only see their habits second-hand); here, the Colleges really
>are just dorms, though they try to foster College loyalty and are trying to
>raise their profile. All the Colleges here are together on one campus. At
>Oxford, by contrast, you enter and leave the university with others from
>your College, your degree certificate mentions your College prominently,
>and the Colleges are separaate collections of buildings throughout the
>city, with non-University buildings in between; it's even been said that
>there is no (sense of a) corporate university at Oxford, but that it's
>really a collection of Colleges loosely organised in the same city. That's
>overstating the case, but you get the point.
>
>Damien
>
>(*More notes if you're interested in British educational nomenclature:) The
>'sixth-form' part comes from the system of private education, where the
>twelve years of schooling are often grouped in twos, so you start in Lower
>First, go on a year later to Upper First, then to Lower Second, until at
>age 16 you arrive in the Lower Sixth and at age 17 in the Upper Sixth, your
>final year of pre-university education. 'Lower Sixth' and 'Upper Sixth'
>spread beyond private education quite some time ago, so that, in my
>state-run secondary school, we had Years 1 to 5 from age 11 to 16, then the
>Lower Sixth and Upper Sixth. My sister, on the other hand, privately
>educated at secondary level, started her secondary education at age 11 in
>the Upper Third (of a school which catered for girls from 4 to 18 and thus
>had the full numbering system from Lower First, I believe, on up). At 12
>she entered the Lower Fourth, and so on, until, like me, at 16 she entered
>the Lower Sixth.
>
>--
>Damien Hall
>
>University of York
>Department of Language and Linguistic Science
>Heslington
>YORK
>YO10 5DD
>UK
>
>Tel. (office) +44 (0)1904 432665
>     (mobile) +44 (0)771 853 5634
>Fax  +44 (0)1904 432673
>
>http://www.york.ac.uk/res/aiseb
>
>http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/lang/people/pages/hall.htm
>
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