Tag:amenity=college

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Public-images-osm logo.svg amenity = college
Cambridge Regional College main entrance.jpg
Description
A place for further education, a post-secondary education institution which is not a University Show/edit corresponding data item.
Rendering in OSM Carto area
Rendering-area-amenity-school.png
Group: education
Used on these elements
may be used on nodesshould not be used on waysmay be used on areas (and multipolygon relations)may be used on relations
Implies
Useful combination
See also
Status: approvedPage for proposal

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

Additional tags

  • college=* – details the type of college