Unlike the college/university distinction in the US, this may vary from state to state. I wouldn’t feel misled at all if someone dropped the “community” from their description of their time in college.
When the state colleges in California began to become universities I had the difference explained to me. A university is made up of more than one college or school. A college is just one body. Example before becoming a university a graduate receiving a BS(4 year) degree in engineering would be granted by San Jose State College. After becoming a University the BS in engineering would granted by the College of Engineering of San Jose State University. San degree same value one just sounds better than the other.
I can’t believe that people associate “went to university” with foreigners.
The general rule of thumb is that a college is a 4 year school while a university has graduate programs. This doesn’t mean that the names of schools follow this format. E.g., Dartmouth College “is a private Ivy League research university.”
Also many tech schools have “institute” in the name instead of college/university but most are universities. You don’t say “I went to institute.” but “I went to university.” or whatever.
I don’t think we have associates (2 year) degrees in Canada. It’s been a while ( 
), but I think the word “degree” in our system always means three or four years.
Universities do award 2 year diplomas or certificates.
That’s the only time I hear it. Many people in the US attend universities. They, unlike Canadians and other places, don’t typically say “I went to University.” That sounds a bit British to my ears. Americans say “I went to college,” even if that “college” was Kent State University.
It’s just one of those language quirks that doesn’t sound right in typical US-speak, perhaps because we expect “the” to come before University? Same with maths, that marks you as a Brit here.
I do agree the overall situation can be confusing, if you’re not being specific anyway. If you are, then I think it clears up. I for instance went to the University of Cincinnati (UC, sorry University of California, we were first ); College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP); School of Architecture and Interior Design (SAID). UC is broken down into many different colleges and further broken down into schools in some cases but not as much.
These definitions are irrelevant to the actual question, especially since there are numerous exceptions.
When speaking of post-secondary education generically, Americans call it “college”—“When I was in college …”
“When I was in university …” simply doesn’t sound idiomatic in American English.
As others have alluded to, the only real answer is that “college” is the generic American term for just about any 4-year school and naming conventions and the U.S. is hopelessly confusing. You really just have to know each individual one to fully understand what someone is referring to and that is a daunting task because there are somewhere between 3,000 - 4,000 of them in the U.S. alone depending on how you count them.
My ex-wife and I went to Tulane University as undergraduates. It was sex segregated in theory at the time so my degree is from Tulane College while my ex-wife’s is from Newcomb College. It didn’t matter at all in practice. We had coed dorms, took the same classes and everything else. Harvard used to follow the same model with Radcliffe college for women.
I went to graduate school at Dartmouth College (a university) and I used to live between Boston College (another university) and the completely separate Boston University. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is just a stone’s throw away and definitely not a trade school.
I found out a long time ago that explaining different U.S. colleges and universities to someone that isn’t intimately familiar with them is virtually indistinguishable from the proclamations of a homeless schizophrenic. There is no rhyme or reason to them. The names don’t mean much and there are countless, counter-intuitive variations of the various models. The only thing you can do is say “college” and be done with it.
I would use “college” and “university” interchangeably to describe my third-level education. Where did you go to college/university? University College Dublin. I would have no particular preference between “I graduated from college in 1993” and “I graduated from university in 1993”. Or simply, “I graduated in 1993”.
Unlike Americans, however, I would not refer to this part of my education as “school”. I left school and went to university.
And then there are some outfits that are neither colleges nor universities but offer one year degrees.
I concur with this. “I went to university” is a phrase that I rarely, if ever, hear an American say – the American term is almost invariably, “I went to college.” I do hear the term used by friends who grew up in (and attended universities in) England and Ireland.
I agree with this, and with everything Alan Smithee has said in this thread.
An American might talk about going “to a university” or “to the university,” but never “to university” the way they’d say “to college” or “in college.” (An American also wouldn’t say they were “in hospital,” but rather “in the hospital”—it’s just an idiomatic thing.)
Even more than that. If an American were to use “university”, he’d probably say “the university”. Sort of like Americans speak of being “in the hospital” vs being “in hospital”.
ETA: Sorry, probably would be “When I was at the University”, not “in the university”.
And that would sound weird/pretentious with the possible exception of those that attended Ohio state.
In the US, from my experience, we wouldn’t say “graduated from university.” In other English-speaking countries (and non-English speaking ones, too), there is a distinction, so I had gotten used to saying “I went to university” or “I graduated from university” and all my American friends looked at me quizzically. I had gotten used to that expression while living abroad, where the distinction was made, and was reminded that it is not an American idiom (or at least not among the Americans I talked to.)
No exception at all. Weird and pretentious when they do it too.
I recall an exception in the U.S. to the usual rule; there may be a school bearing the University label that’s undergrad-only without any subunits, but I’m having trouble finding it so may have imagined it. There are of course colleges with graduate programs. E.g. Bryn Mawr College.
If an American said “I went to the university,” he or she would likely mean “I physically traveled to the location of the university.” It would have no implication regarding his or her relationship to the university.
Doesn’t the UK (and non-US varieties of English) have this same sort of distinction? It’s the difference between “I went to college” vs “I went to the college.” We say both in the US depending on what we mean. But we don’t say “I went to university,” as other varieties of English do.