There are three kinds of tertiary education

There are three kinds of tertiary education - university, college and community college. + technical training institute.
• University provides all three kinds of degrees - undergraduate programme, graduate programme and post graduate programme
• College - provides only one degree - Bachelor's degree
• Community College - provides vocational training and prepares for practical profession.
• Technical training institute - - II -

At the university, students usually study general course of Arts or Sciences and then choose a subject of and area, a major, they will specialize for the following two years.
The best and most prestigeous universities in the USA are called Ivy League. Ivy should remind us of the old British universities that were covered with ivy. Those are 8 universities located in the NE of the USA (Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth College, Princeton, Pennsylvania). They are very expensive and selective. Excellent but poor students are entitled to scholarship. The most famous and the oldest university in the USA is Harvard University. It's situated in Massachusetts. It was founded by John Harvard in 1636 in the town of Cambridge. He was born in London.
The American universities have high academic reputation because they have excellent libraries and research facilities. But the problem is that they ask private foundations and federal government for financial support and therefore jeopardise their political and cultural autonomy.

There're also interest groups, so called sororities/fraternities. You must go through initiation rites and pay fees. Each of the societies has a name that consists of two or three Greek letters.

Nowadays, positive discrimination at the universities exists. They support minorities (black students and women). they were discriminated in the past. It lasted from 1898 when the Supreme Court ruled on segregation and segregated schools became constitutional. It lasted to 1954 when they made decision that segregated schools are unconstitutional. Since that time, the schools are integrated. (Elizabeth Eckford was the first black woman who attended Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The first woman at Harvard University started attending it in 1969 - before, women had had special college - Rattcliff College).