Tag:amenity=college
 amenity = college
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A place for further education, a post-secondary education institution which is not a University 
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Rendering in OSM Carto 
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| Group: Education |
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Status: approved
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 | The word "college" means different things in different dialects of English and "further education" is unclear for at least some people outside UK |
The tag amenity=college is used to map a place for "further education" or "continuing education": usually a post-secondary education institution which is not an institution of higher education (amenity=university).
The intention is that amenity=university would be for institutions of higher education and amenity=college for further education. So Trinity College Cambridge or Baliol College Oxford would be amenity=university, but Cambridge Regional College would be amenity=college.
Disambiguation
Note that this tag is for post-secondary education institutions: secondary institutions known as "colleges" should be tagged amenity=school. Unfortunately, many features with the tag amenity=college in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries are secondary schools, due to confusion with the meaning of colegio / colégio ("secondary school"/"high school") in those languages.
Furthermore, in some regions of the English-speaking world, "college" often refers to a principal division of a university, such as a "College of Arts and Sciences". Such divisions are often mapped as faculty=* on a building=university. However, in cases where the college does not correspond to a whole or single building, the appropriate feature tag is unclear. Some mappers have overloaded amenity=college for this purpose.
How to map
Colleges typically occupy a large area, so it is recommended to create an area around the entire campus with the amenity=college tag, plus a name=* tag at least. For a more complex multi-site facility then ideally it will be mapped using a multipolygon. If the area of the college is uncertain or cannot yet be mapped precisely, it is also possible to use a node near the center of the college and tag it with amenity=college. There should not be both a node and an area with the same tags.
See also
- amenity=school - a primary or secondary school
- amenity=university - an institution of higher education
- amenity=music_school - institution where people learn to be musicians (not limited to "further education" or "post-secondary")
- amenity=driving_school - institution where people are taught to drive