History

main: Madrasah

The origins of the college lie in the madrasah of the medieval Islamic world. The madrasah in an Islamic college of law and theology, usually affiliated with a mosque, and is funded by a charitable trust known as Waqf, the origins of the trust law. The internal organization of the first European colleges was also borrowed from the earlier madrasahs, like the system of fellows and scholars, with the Latin term for fellow, socius, being a direct translation of the Arabic term for fellow, sahib.

While philosophy and the rational sciences were often excluded from a madrasah's curriculum,Toby E. Huff (2003), The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West, Cambridge University Press, pp. 77-8 this varied among different institutions, with some only choosing to teach the "religious sciences", and others teaching both the religious and the "rational sciences", usually logic, mathematics and philosophy. Some madrasahs further extended their curriculum to history, politics, ethics, music, metaphysics, medicine, astronomy and chemistry.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, usage of the word "college" remains the loosest, encompassing a range of institutions:

Primary and secondary schools

• Certain private schools, known as "Public" schools in England, for children such as Eton College and Malvern College.Eton College website using school as the educational institute but College as the name
• In Cambridgeshire, there are certain secondary schools called Village Colleges, which aim to be a centre for the community as well as for their students.
• Some Highly Achieving Secondary Schools, such as Wright Robinson College in the UK, may carry the term College in order to show that they have current specialist status.

Further education

In general use, a college is an institution between secondary school and university, either a sixth form college or a college of further education and adult education, which were usually called technical colleges. Recently, however, with the phasing out of polytechnical colleges, the term has become less clear-cut.

• Colleges of further education and mature education.
• Sixth form colleges, where students study for A Levels

Higher education

main: Colleges within universities in the United Kingdom In relation to universities, the term college normally refers to a part of the university which does not have degree-awarding powers in itself. Degrees are always awarded by universities whereas colleges are institutions or organisations which prepare students for the degree.