Some universities are called Polytechnic and some other contain Technology in their name, for example the Valencia Polytechnic University (UPV) vs. the Technical University of Berlin (TUB).
What are the differences between them?
Asked
Active
Viewed 2,908 times
8
-
@Wrzlprmft- Tanks for your edition but I think you should just edit grammatically. – Rwy5 May 20 '15 at 16:41
-
The difference is that Technical is absolutely more beautiful. Just kidding, they have the same meaning. – Machado May 20 '15 at 18:21
-
@Rwy5: The reason for my edit is that none of the names you are giving as an example is a name used by the respective institutions, neither of which has an official English name, as far as I can tell. For example, Technical University of Valencia is as correct as Valencia Polytechnic University. At least the former is what Wikipedia is using for whatever it’s worth. (Also, Stack Exchange explicitly encourages edits beyond grammar.) – Wrzlprmft May 20 '15 at 19:08
-
@Wrzlprmft There are examples, though. For instance, in New York there are Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rochester Institute of Technology and those are official names. – Joshua Taylor May 21 '15 at 14:21
-
@JoshuaTaylor: I know and I was trying to edit some such examples in. – Wrzlprmft May 21 '15 at 14:32
-
@Wrzlprmft Ah, I missed that (saw the later part of the comment, but missed "the reason for my edit"). For what it's worth, I think adding a reasoning example is worthy of an edit. That's an important way to make a question more answerable. – Joshua Taylor May 21 '15 at 14:53
2 Answers
9
Wikipedia has a nice summary of this distinction (or lack thereof). In essence: the term "polytechnic" comes from the French École Polytechnique. Thus, a university with 'Polytechnic' in its name is typically one that was influenced in its founding in some way by the French system. Today, however, there is generally no significant difference.
jakebeal
- 187,714
- 41
- 655
- 920
8
Nothing. Whichever the founders liked the most.
In some cases, universities called "technical" even provide non technical degrees, but they keep the original name.
Davidmh
- 21,215
- 5
- 60
- 105