Colleges Directory

A university (college) is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees. A university provides both tertiary and quaternary education. University is derived from the Latin universitas, meaning corporation (since the first medieval European universities were simply groups of scholars).

Colleges by States
Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware DC, Washington Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho	Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri	Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania	Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

Because of the above definition, the oldest universities in the world were all European, as the awarding of academic degrees was not a custom of older institutions of learning in Asia and Africa. However, institutions of higher learning considerably older than the most ancient European universities existed in countries such as China, Egypt and India.

In the United States, universities are usually treated by the law as a corporation like any other, although many states impose special responsibilities to safeguard the welfare of a university's students. Because the U.S. federal government does not directly organize or regulate universities, unofficial but formalized systems of accreditation have been developed by regional networks of academic institutions.

In the late 19th century, the U.S. Congress encouraged the creation of many land-grant universities. In the last decades of the 20th century, a number of "mega-universities" have been created, teaching with distance learning techniques.

The vast majority of American private and public universities are non-profit (meaning that excess tuition is put into providing more and better services), but starting in the 1970s, many for-profit colleges and universities were founded to take advantage of changes in the federal student assistance programs.