Among the departments of a university, college refers to colleges, such as law school and management school, and departments, such as philosophy department and Chinese department. Generally speaking, a college is larger than a department.

Whether it is a college or a department, it will correspond to one or more specific majors, such as law school, in which the major is law, while the majors offered by the school of management may be employment business administration, accounting, marketing and so on. The majors offered by the Department of Philosophy will correspond to philosophy.

The department settings of each university are generally different. For example, Peking University is the Department of Psychology and Beijing Normal University is the School of Psychology. The difference between the two is mainly reflected in the scale.