Tag:amenity=college

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
• amenity=language_school - institution where one studies a foreign language