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When I spent a year as a high school senior in Minn. a long time ago (75-76), my classmates were certainly considering going to the University or to a college - often referred to as a "community college". Maybe things have changed in the 38 years since then, or maybe it varies from state to state.
Those community colleges did award bachelor degrees, master degrees were far less common. The education was generally viewed as less academic, much more applied science.
Here in Norway, we distinguish between universities and "høgskole" (which literally translates to "High School", but you start høgskole education after 13 years of general schooling). Similar to what Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter tells, høgskole education teach you how to do things properly, rather than do develop new theories  , and the education is shorter: Up until a few years ago, you could choose between a two-year and a three-year program. Today, only the three year program is offered. In engineering diciplines, a University education will take you five years. If you continue to a Ph.D, it will typically take you another two to three years, for a total of eight years.
Re. the headline and original post: It is commonly said here in Norway that a høgskole educated engineer can be put to productive work immediately, while a university educated engineer won't be of any real value for your company for the first year after he completes his education. (However, the university guy usually has a much higher long term potential.) I guess this is another phrasing of what newton.saber says.
In my study days, I postponed my last year of study, working for 14 months, so I believe I was of use to my first (post-degree) employer from day one.  (Actually, it was the same company I worked for during those 14 months.) But I would like to mention that going back to university after 14 months of work exprience raised a lot of questions in me about the usability of the stuff we worked with the last year. It didn't seem very essential to the needs that I had learned during my working year.
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Interesting. Thanks.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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In my little part of the world, there is a similar difference between college (community college) and university. There is a saying:
If you want an education, go to university.
If you want a job, go to college.
Having been to both, I agree. University was interesting, but college landed me a job before I even graduated, and I have been working ever since.
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You state:
When I spent a year as a high school senior in Minn. a long time ago (75-76), my classmates were certainly considering going to the University or to a college - often referred to as a "community college". Maybe things have changed in the 38 years since then, or maybe it varies from state to state.
Although this may be true, the discussion is typically "should I attend a community college or should I attend a University". After the choice is made, however, I expected them to say "I am in college" regardless of whether they chose a University or a community college. If the intention is to make a distinction (at least in the states by a native speaker in the states), the full term "community college" is usually used rather than just "college" or they may offer a further clarification that it is a full University, but, I have never heard a native speaker in the states say "I am attending university". My recollections of things in the states related to college only go back to 1980, however. Things were very different while living in outside the US.
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Same in Brazil. I studied in a college that became an university when they started teaching other areas besides engineering.
Edit:
You could say that you always go to college when you are going to the university, but you are not always going to university when you are going to college.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson
----
Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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They're used interchangeably but they have some subtle differences. Universities are sometimes comprised of colleges (Taubman College at University of Michigan, for example, and TX A&M has many colleges ).
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They do in the UK.
College is where children (and some adults) go after school to get low level vocational qualifications or to get skills up to a level to go to university.
University is where adults go to get degrees or higher qualifications.
Although it used to be different, there used to be polytechnics for vocational qualifications and universities for academic qualifications but the polytechnics had pretensions of grandeur and soon both were called universities. This happened the year I first went to university IIRC.
Traditional universities are made up of a number of colleges, but that is more of a tribal thing than an educational thing, and they are not related to the colleges from above.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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Same here in South Africa. Though we have Universities for the "degrees" and Technical Colleges (abr. Technicon) for vocational qualifications (i.e. Diploma instead of Degree). Or at least that's how it used to be (when I was at uni) until someone thought it sounded not too Politically Correct and now you can get your B.Comm / B.Sc / B.Funny at a tech as well ... 
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The degrees you get at SA Technicons are technical degrees, so it would be a Technical B Com or B Com Tech or some such, I'm not sure about the terminology. Also, they take an additional year or two. So after three years you get your Diploma, and then with an additional year of study you get a B Tech degree. Another two years and you might get your M Tech.
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I stand corrected! Thanks.
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Pleasure
I only know this because I worked at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) for a few years doing embedded C coding (I have no tertiary qualification whatsoever).
TUT Engineering Dept had an initiative where they provided office space and students to help small businesses develop products. Ostensibly this provided the small businesses with almost-free labour, and gave the students practical experience. Problem was students were only available for 6-month stretches and didn't have skin in the game.
So the engineer "employeed" me with bursary money to fix their code (a paltry sum but wonderful experience).
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"University is where adults go "
ROFL! 
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Well that took a lot longer than expected.
What is the correct term for those who are no longer legally children but not yet able to act like adults. Twats perhaps?
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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chriselst wrote: What is the correct term for those who are no longer legally children but not yet able to act like adults.
While at uni my father used to tease me, saying: "A student is the lowest form of animal life."
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RyanDev wrote: where you are at?
At my college/university we were taught to not end a sentence with 'at'. Oops, just did it.
(sorry Dude, couldn't resist)
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Gary Huck wrote: (sorry Dude, couldn't resist)
No problem. I get busted by the grammar police all the times. 
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Veni, vidi, vici.
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8 years in college? I don't think he's a PhD, so even assuming he's got a Masters (4 and then 2 years for 6 years total), given how he took an extra 2 years to complete that, no surprises there I would say.
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Not everyone should be a programmer.
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Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote: Not everyone should be a programmer.
So true and yet so difficult to convince those who shouldn't be that they shouldn't be.
I've worked with at least one terrible programmer -- who did not even understand the basic concept of function calls, so he had thousands of lines of same, slightly altered, for loop peppered through a program which had the same bug throughout. He could not be convinced of his powers of terribleness and could not be deterred from writing more bad code.
Blithely they roll on.
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I was a warehouse person at a company. My job was to receive inventory, stock inventory, ship inventory, etc. I managed to hit myself in the head with a steel rod and get a knot large enough to almost consider a hospital visit. Many questions were asked,
"Are you Ok"
"Do you need to go to the doctor"
"Why was there a steel rod in your hand"
"How come we heard light-saber noises before your injury"
etc.
Bottom-line, warehouse work is not for me. I don't have the capacity for it. I know that, it is my limit. Others should learn theirs as well.
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Amen. Can't wait for this "everyone should code" phase to die.
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I liked the first reply to this article.
"I stopped reading half way though this because the article has nothing to do with entrepreneurship or college. This is a long rant about somebody who lived a sheltered life and got hit hard when they came to the "real world"."
/ravi
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Oh MAN I wish I could follow that boy's life when he leaves school
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