Colleges and Universities

American colleges and universities are either public or private, that is, supported by public funds or supported privately by a church group or other groups acting as private citizens although under a state charter.

A public institution is owned and operated by a go­vernment, either a state or a municipal government. The government appropriates large sums of money for the institution's expenses. Yet these sums are normally not suf­ficient to cover all expenses, and so the institution is partially dependent on student fees and on gifts.

A private institution receives no direct financial aid from any government, municipal, state or federal. The money used to pay the operating expenses has a threefold origin: tuition fees paid by the students, money given in the form of gifts for immediate use, and the income from invested capital in the possession of the institution and originally received by the institution in the form of the gifts to be invested with only the income to be spent.

Of the nation's nearly 1,900 institutions of higher learn­ing roughly one-third are state or city institutions. About 1,200 are privately controlled. Approximately 700 of these are con­trolled by religious groups. Less than half of these institutions are liberal art colleges and universities which stress the lan­guages, history, science and philosophy. The rest are profes­sional and technological schools and junior colleges.

A college is generally defined as an institution of higher learning which offers a course of instruction over a four-year period, and which grants a bachelor's degree at the conclusion of studies. As part of university, a college graduate is distinguish­ed from a graduate of professional school. However, the profess­ional schools in some universities are called colleges.

A college prepares the student for two things: either graduate study leading to master's or doctor's degree or a job immediately after graduation. A student who majors in business administration for example, may be fully prepared fop a career in business when he has finished college.

On the other hand, a student majoring in psychology often must do a great deal of graduate work before he is competent in this field.

Students are classified as freshmen, sophomores, jun­iors and seniors. A freshman is a first year student, a sophomore, a second year student, a junior, a third year student, and a senior, a fourth year student. All students who have graduated from the senior class and who con­tinue studying at a university are classified as advanced stu­dents or graduate students. Some graduate students receive grants which cover the cost of their education; a person on such a fellowship is called a university fellow.

1. Skim through the text and say which of its paragraphs gives the information about:

a) what is a public institution; b) what is a private institution; c) what is a college; d) what a college prepares the student for; e) classification of students.