College explained to kids

A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering vocational education, or a secondary school. In the United States, "college" may refer to a constituent part of a university or to a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, but generally "college" and "university" are used interchangeably, whereas in other English-speaking countries, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Ireland, "college" is understood as a constituent part of a university, whereas "university" is used to refer to the degree-awarding institutions themselves. In ancient Rome a collegium was a club or society, a group of people living together under a common set of rules (cf. article college in the Oxford English Dictionary). Aside from the modern educational context - nowadays the most common use of "college" - there are various other meanings also derived from the original Latin term. For example, in the United States "college" is sometimes used to refer to a secondary school, an institution which provides an education from grades nine to twelve. In its original meaning, a collegium was almost always a religious corporation, especially a guild of priests, or a society of men studying a religious discipline (such as theology). This usage is reflected in the etymology of the word "college": the Latin collegium is the root of the English word "college" (which originally meant "assembly", "meeting", or "gathering of people"), but also of the word "collaborate" (which originally meant "work together").