Most post-secondary schools can be described as pub­lic or pri­vate, two-year or four-year.

Pub­lic insti­tu­tions are state sup­ported. Pri­vate for-profit insti­tu­tions are busi­nesses. Pri­vate not-for-profit insti­tu­tions are inde­pen­dent – for instance, the school might have been estab­lished by a church or through local com­mu­nity dona­tions rather than by the state government.

Four-year insti­tu­tions offer bachelor’s degrees, and some offer advanced degrees. Two-year insti­tu­tions offer associate’s degrees. Less-than-two-year insti­tu­tions offer train­ing and award cer­tifi­cates of completion.

You can use the U.S. Depart­ment of Education’s search tool to find infor­ma­tion about schools in all these categories.

Here’s a more detailed descrip­tion of the kinds of schools you might hear about as you plan for your post-high-school education:

Col­lege — A four-year col­lege grants bachelor’s degrees (Bach­e­lor of Arts; Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence). Some col­leges also award master’s degrees.

Uni­ver­sity — A uni­ver­sity grants bach­e­lors and mas­ters degrees, and some­times includes a pro­fes­sional school such as a law school or med­ical school. Uni­ver­si­ties tend to be larger than col­leges, focus more on schol­arly or sci­en­tific research, and might have larger class sizes.

Com­mu­nity col­lege — A pub­lic two-year col­lege grant­ing associate’s degrees and some­times cer­tifi­cates in par­tic­u­lar tech­ni­cal (career-related) sub­jects. Many stu­dents start their post-secondary edu­ca­tion at a com­mu­nity col­lege and then trans­fer to a four-year school, either because a com­mu­nity col­lege tends to be more afford­able than a four-year col­lege, or because of the open admis­sions pol­icy at com­mu­nity colleges.

Junior col­lege – A Junior Col­lege is sim­i­lar to a com­mu­nity col­lege, except that a junior col­lege is usu­ally a pri­vate school.

Career school, Tech­ni­cal school, Vocational/Trade school- These terms are often used inter­change­ably. These schools may be pub­lic or pri­vate, two-year or less-than-two-year. Career schools offer courses that are designed to pre­pare stu­dents for spe­cific careers, from weld­ing to cos­me­tol­ogy to med­ical imag­ing, etc. The dif­fer­ence between tech­ni­cal schools and trade schools is that tech­ni­cal schools teach the sci­ence behind the occupation,