Colleges — how this layer is made

What you are looking at

Each dot is a college. There are more than 68,000 worldwide. Colour represents who operates it where somebody has recorded that, and the size of a dot represents the ground the college covers. Click on any of them to see what OpenStreetMap records, such as the body that runs it. If there's a Wikipedia article, we show a short summary and a link to the full article, in your own language where possible.

Where the data comes from

Every college here is something a mapper added at the OpenStreetMap website, from a survey, from local knowledge or from aerial imagery. We don't model or estimate anything ourselves, and we haven't merged in any national list of colleges.

What we include

We use one exact tag, `amenity=college`. Schools and universities each have a map of their own.

The word "college" means different things

This is the map's biggest caveat, and it is about the word rather than the data. In OpenStreetMap `amenity=college` means education after school but separate from a university. In the United Kingdom that is a sixth-form college or a further education college. In the United States it often means a community college. Elsewhere it covers technical institutes, teacher training colleges and agricultural colleges. In some countries people use the word for a secondary school, and in others for a university.

So the tag doesn't mean what your own country's usage would suggest. What is on this map is what mappers chose to tag as a college.

Colour

Colour represents who operates the college, and only about one college in ten says. We draw the rest in grey. Of those that do record it, roughly equal numbers are privately and publicly operated, and a very small number are religious.

Grey is a real category here. It says nobody has recorded who runs that college, not that the college is unusual.

Privately operated does not mean the college charges fees. The OpenStreetMap tag says a non-government body runs it, which could be a company, a trust or a charity, and many such places are publicly funded and free to attend. That is why the legend says "operated" throughout.

Size

The size of a dot represents the ground the college covers in square metres. Many colleges are mapped as a single point with no outline, and we draw those at one nominal size rather than the smallest. Whether a college is a point or an outline is mostly about how thoroughly somebody mapped it.

Size is physical extent rather than enrolment or standing. An agricultural college with fields draws larger than a city institution with more students and one building.

Where the map is empty

An absent college means nobody has mapped it, not that it isn't there. Coverage is strongest in western and central Europe and other well mapped regions, and thinner in poorer countries. A dense patch is a well mapped place first.

Because the word itself varies so much, an empty area can also mean a country files the same institutions under a different tag.

Up to date, mostly

OpenStreetMap is edited continuously, and we take a new copy once every one to three months. A college that closed or merged long ago may stay on the map until a mapper updates it.

Source and licence

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