COLLEGE (Latin, collegium), in its pri mary sense, a body of colleagues, a corporation or society of persons invested with certain powers and rights, performing certain duties or engaged in some common employment. In Great Britain and America some societies of physicians are called colleges. So, also, there are colleges of surgeons, a college of heralds, etc. Colleges of these kinds are usually incor porated or established by the supreme power of the state. The most familiar application of the term college in English is to a society of per sons engaged in the pursuits of literature or science, including both professors and students. At first the students of the universities had no common bond of union, except that of study and discipline, and were lodged where they could find it convenient. Then hostels or board ing-houses were provided (principally by the religious orders, for the benefit of those of their own fraternity), in which the scholars lived under a certain superintendence. Chari table persons subsequently endowed these hos tels that poor scholars might have free lodgings. The colleges of Oxford and Cambridge are academical institutions of this kind, each en dowed with revenues of its own, and having fellows, students and tutors, who live together under a head, in particular buildings. Each college is regulated by laws framed by its founder, with such modifications as have been deemed necessary to introduce from time to time. According to these laws, the head (vari ously styled master, principal, warden, rector, etc.), is either chosen by the fellows from their own number, or appointed by the Crown or other authority. The fellows are graduates who receive special emoluments for a term of years, and are generally elected to the position on account of special scholarship; while the scholars, admitted as undergraduates, are either chosen from particular localities, schools, etc., or elected according to merit after free competition. There are also a number of ordinary students, all as a rule occupying cham bers belonging to the college. The under
graduates receive their instruction chiefly from tutors, who are generally resident fellows. The colleges are subordinate to the university, and it is the university that confers degrees, and institutes and carries out the necessary ex aminations. Generally speaking, the term col lege implies an institution inferior to a univer sity, so far at least as the right of conferring degrees is concerned; but in Scotland, Ireland, Germany and elsewhere there are no colleges such as those of Oxford and Cambridge, and the college or colleges in Scotland and Ireland are simply edifices in which the teaching is carried on. Some modern colleges are called university colleges, either because equipped similarly to a university, or because connected with a university, and able to train students for degrees to be obtained from that university. Institutions for teaching theology are often called colleges, and some schools that train pupils for the universities, or give a good secondary education, are also so called. In American usage college commonly indicates the stage of instruction intermediate between the high school and the university.
In France there are university colleges or facultes in all large towns, besides lycies, corre sponding to what are called, in Germany, gym nasia. Other institutions of a similar kind, that is, schools for secondary education, are called colleges communaux. These are public establishments aided by the communes, and sub ject to the direction of the public authorities. Besides these, there is the College de France, which deserves the name of a university. It was instituted in 1529 by Francis I, and here numerous professors, among whom there are always some of the most distinguished men, lecture publicly and gratuitously. See AMERI CAN COLLEGE; AMERICAN UNIVERSITY' CAM BRIDGE, UNIVERSITY OF; and articles on different colleges and universities.