Until recently I assume they were synonymous 😅, Here you go to Uni immediatly after finishing HS.
In the US there’s really no set differentiation. There’s no rules that colleges have to be private or universities have to be public. Harvard is a college (undergrad) and a university, neither are funded by the state.
The general way it works is, universities are large, colleges are small… however, there’s even exceptions to that, if I remember right there’s a university in Alaska that only enrolls like 300 people. A lot of colleges in my state are state funded because they are 2 year community colleges. A lot of our universities have 4 year liberal arts colleges at them.
As someone who lives in the US, that is not true. All universities are colleges, but not all colleges are universities. A community college is not a university.
But in the US, colloquially every 4 year school is a college. People say “I’m going to college.” People don’t say “I’m going to university.”
I’ve never referred to my university as a college.
I attended a two year community college, which I always referred to as college, and a four year state university that I always referred to as university. Otherwise, I referred to them by their acronyms, or more loosely as school.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
