There is a lot of freedom with the names. But generally, if someone is saying "I am going to College" they mean "I am going to University" or whatever you people with the squiggly moneys say.
In general, "university" tends to apply to the institution, and "college' tends to apply to the "school within a school" as it were. As in, "College of Engineering", "College of Arts and Sciences", the other ones, etc. So someone could be in the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin on the Day of the Dead in the Year of our Lord 2010 while looking for the Rusty Coathanger of +5 Aborting.

I go to SUNY Albany (state university of new york) which is also called University at Albany, but really it means the worst school to ever grace the education system.
The only real difference in American schools and what there called is the amount of money you pay for tuition, and how difficult they are. Unless you go to Albany.
I would recommend going to a Communtity college for the first year or two to save money, and take are of your gen eds, so even if you change majors a million times, it wont affect you too badly.
Wish I had taken that route now. But hey, two years left so what can you do?
Good luck in school

I'm a philosophy major. The description of it at that link is hilarious.

"define the cosine integer"
"cosine integer"
"cosine"
"integer"
Durr?
Anyways, as for the freshmen, try to study things that interests you.

I think my total college expenses this year amounted to a whopping €100. That's like double the last year's blood money tax. I officially gave more money to GOG than for my higher education. All hail socialised education, all the back breaking school work at a fraction of the cost! Of course, with all that excess money laying around, the government easily makes up the difference in funding with extra tax on beer. It's a win - win.

Holy crap... But was the education worth it?
I found the more religous the school the more ..... the young women are (and by '....' You could pretty much use any term and it would prove true :) )
Changing Majors for your education happens :) just go undeclared untill you figure out what you want to do with your life. At some point though, when you start living it you come to find out what you studied and what you do are often times two very different things.
Congrats though just remember "there aint no heat like Oklahoma heat, cause Oklahoma heat is damn HOT!~"

You need to define worth. Considering the trend that nowadays every single young person wants to get their hands on some sort of college degree, it's slowly becoming mandatory. In the end, it's definitely better than not having the skills and knowledge you get during college years, as opposed to just start working in your field (I went through technical high school, totally qualified to work behind an manual/automated work process, for example, but lack experience). As for the worth of our engineering colleges, well, here's a small project me and a colleague from the faculty got for supervision and general field tests.
It was windy. And you don't want to be up there, checking the quality of the assembly when it's windy. =(

Well... I have a friend of mine who did not attend uni spent a year abroad doing various things, and then landed a job making 150k a year doing the very thing he wanted to study.
I mean to me, you get what you put into it. Maybe it is an american thing but I've got a few friends who got degrees in their area of study and their part time job they had in school is now their full time job and they are happy with it and regret spending the time and money on their education.
I'm not downing the quality of the education system in your country, just merely trying to ask do you feel as if your education was well spent?
I coasted way to much, and regret not taking some classes more seriously,

I think that was either luck, or extreme dedication, or your friend was talented enough that he is considered worth that much pay. It's a rare combination of getting paid nicely and really enjoying your work. So you probably need all three of the above mentioned combined. Since I'm not planing of going abroad, I can realistically hope for much less, but the project that you can see in the above pictures was more fun than that building a steel monstrosity of a wind measuring station has any right to be. The documentation before and after the field work... not so. Can't win them all. =)
You may be surprised, but it's not an american thing at all. See it all the time here. But you need to know, studying here is a lot cheaper than in america, and most people can change their venue mid way through college and do something completely different from then on. Of course, the problem then is that most people that do this don't finish college until they're 28 or 30, and while they may have worked this whole time, student work doesn't count towards their pension. So that's ten years of pension down the drain, if they don't put some money extra for this purpose.
But it's actually a good thing to put the quality of the education as an issue. Because I can see that it's not so much of the quality of the system as a whole, but more so of the quality of the students. And more than not you can see that better student's are those that aspire to something greater, or in other words that have a goal.
I'm not that great of a student, but I try to grab any interesting project I can get. Then you meet new people, get some experience, feel a bit better about yourself, and because of this you actually attend all your classes for at least a month. It's nice that the faculty tries to get us off our asses and onto the field and on the manufacturing floor early, and give us a problem that we have to solve for our self and has real life repercussions, as things often are when you leave college.
For one thing, I knew that all my calculations were correct, but I was still scared shirtless whether the tension in the cables of the structure was too much or too little. It wouldn't break, but get something wrong, and people have to work an extra day because some smart ass student got in the way and ruined everything. Yeah, meet interesting people indeed =)

I'm taking an associate's degree in Systems & Network Support at Terra State Community College here in Ohio : P Though prior to that I went to a vocational high school for Network Systems (and seemed to be the only person who actually bothered doing maintenance/repairs on systems and filing reports for said maintenance/repairs while the Evil Programmers were playing Call of Duty, or performing some demonic ritual in Visual Studio)

I've always wondered about that particular scenario. I don't recall ever seeing an ad saying "Philosopher wanted". I know a girl who's studying for a degree in philosophy (has been for years), and she gets extremely pissed whenever anyone asks her what she's going to use it for.

My sister got her degree in Philosophy (she started out as an Electrical Engineering major and switched to Philosophy her fourth and final year). She's now a teacher. With most of those majors you will end up needing to get more schooling to transform your degree into something more useful, like going to law school or getting your teaching credential. They're minimally useful out of the box.

Only snipped cause I hate the quote system :P
He was, mainly, just in the right time and place and impressed the company enough they were willing to give him a shot. Doesn't happen often but once and awhile peeps get lucky.
That kinda sucks about the pension thing, however wouldnt a person be able to say take a higher paying field with more time spent like a Doc? Or how does that work exactly, in the states, most people take a test MCat, LSAT or others if they want to try and do the long long long long long school choices... and even then they have to contend with getting the funding for said school, accepted, etc etc etc.
I do agree it is more the personal choice then the actual place they attended.
Edit to take out the depressing cynical stuff :p

Heh, I guess the UK is not quite as extreme as the $50,000 fees for Ivy League universities, and the loans are on soft terms. However I see it going that way in the near future. I picked a technical degree that has a lot of vocational elements to back up and diversify my existing experience in the field. Hopefully it will pay off when I'm done...