What is the difference between community college and junior college

You may also see them referred to as trade schools, career schools, or vocational colleges. Someone could make the argument that these are all separate categories of schools with nuanced differences, but the U.

Department of Education suggests they can be used interchangeably, with one small distinction:. You may earn a diploma or a certificate, prepare for a licensing exam, or study to begin work as an apprentice or journeyman in a skilled trade. Here are just a handful of the highly specialized programs you might find at a technical college:.

Not all colleges will offer graduate level degrees. Dartmouth College was founded as a private college in , making it the ninth oldest institution of higher education in the United States. The result of this debacle? Dartmouth University took over the buildings of Dartmouth College, and so Dartmouth College rented some buildings near campus and existed as a shadow school.

Dartmouth University hid the school charter in a farmhouse. The academic societies at Dartmouth College refused to give up their libraries, so a handful of professors from Dartmouth University riled up some townsfolk and came to take the books back in the middle of the night.

They started breaking down doors with axes , which was not in any way sneaky. The students woke up and fought them off with firewood. And then the trustees of Dartmouth College won in the supreme court and moved back in, and Dartmouth University disappeared forever. So did the professors go back to work and say they were sorry? Probably not.

All this to say, Dartmouth College is prestigious Ivy League school that offers some of the highest quality graduate-level education in the country, but they really like being called a college. John Wesley University has less than students. And that university is more than years old! To be fair though, it was called John Wesley College for 50 years, and it was called a plain old school before that. You could maybe call those differences guidelines, but it might be more appropriate to call them suggestions.

Collegiate universities are essentially a collection of colleges that share a campus and an administration. This nebulous classification traces its origins back to the twelfth century and is most popular in western Europe, but there are about thirty collegiate universities in the U. Traditionally, collegiate universities are either residential, meaning the students live at the college within the university, or non-residential, where the colleges play a primarily academic role.

These colleges are often named after an influential person who was affiliated with the college. The real question is: what do you want to do with your life? Your answer will help you find the right school for you , which could be a college, a university, or something else entirely. They may have exactly what you need to get into a highly specialized role in less than two years, and for less than a fortune. With a little research, you can find the best schools in your desired field.

Compare them to find what works best with your budget and goals. Starting school without a degree in mind can really mess you up. You could wind up spending extra years of your life and thousands of dollars for a degree you could have planned for. This can be a great time to discover what you want to major in. The main disadvantage is that if you know what you want to do ahead of time, you can sometimes kill two birds with one class and find courses that count as both general requirements and part of your major.

Something else to consider: do you have enough money or financial aid options to afford four plus years of postsecondary education? Of course, people can change. Kids straight out of high school may still make up the majority of the student body, but there are also adults that have been in the workforce, parents that have spent the last several years raising kids, and even retirees seeking new challenges or perhaps working to attain a degree now that they have the time and money to do so.

In short, anyone can attend community college. But the other main difference is that not all students at community colleges view the experience solely as a gateway to a 4-year college or university. Some will use their time at community college to learn a trade like nursing and work towards certification or licensure.

Others will go for online Ecommerce degrees. And there are some who are simply looking to attain an associate's degree, without any plans to continue their community college education beyond that point. So while the junior college platform is certainly responsible for the birth of community colleges as we know them today, the two are not necessarily the same, and the former is generally considered the product of a bygone era.

Chad Agrawal is the founder of CCTS, helping students transfer from community college to Ivy League, tier 1 or anywhere else by following this community college guide. I like what you guys are up also. Such as: I went to community college before attending State University. Cam Newton played for a junior college before joining the Auburn Tigers. Improve this question. Trevor D. Trevor D Trevor D 1 1 gold badge 9 9 silver badges 21 21 bronze badges.

Junior College is not, to my knowledge, used "primarily in sports contexts. It's the same thing. The junior college in my neighborhood was public, by the way, so I also don't necessarily agree with the tendency mentioned by MarkBeadles in his answer.

Clare based on your comment I decided to check the stats directly, see the edit to my answer. As with the difference between university and college and institution that has been hashed to death here, any historical distinctions have been swept away and it is largely a matter of tradition versus marketing. Show 1 more comment. Active Oldest Votes. Edited to add: It looks like "Community College" is currently much more common that "Junior College" as a name.

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