Collegiate Institute - United States

United States

In the United States, the term has largely fallen into disuse. Collegiate institutes in the United States were, for the most part, colleges, and even the first name of Yale University when founded in 1701 was a similar-sounding Collegiate School. But the definition of a college in the U.S. also differs from that of other countries, and has been primarily based on the liberal arts college model of higher education. Two examples of collegiate institutes in the United States before the term fell out of use are the Oberlin Collegiate Institute of Ohio, now Oberlin College, and the Pentecostal Collegiate Institute of New York and Rhode Island, now the Eastern Nazarene College of Massachusetts. Both were founded as postsecondary institutions (in 1833 and 1900, respectively), but the latter would drop its college curriculum and exist as a college preparatory school from 1902 until 1918, demonstrating the flexibility of the term collegiate institute. Partly because the term institute holds some ambiguity of its own and can denote either educational extreme, from a pure research institution to an unrecognised educational institution, both schools would later change their names to use college instead of collegiate institute (in 1850 and 1918, respectively, each after less than 20 years since its founding) to more accurately represent their nature and mission, in step with the trend that the term "collegiate institute" would see little use beyond the early 20th century.