Many colleges were founded by charitable endowment in the University of Paris in the Middle Ages [see Scholasticism]; these were originally residences for students (for the most part teenagers), but acquired a teaching role. Among the most famous were those of Boncourt, Coqueret, Montaigu, and Navarre, and above all the Sorbonne. Many subsisted until the Revolution; in the 16th c. some played an important part in the humanist revival, especially Boncourt (where Jodelle's Cléopâtre was performed), and Coqueret, where Dorat taught Ronsard, Du Bellay, and others. A later arrival was the Collège des Quatre Nations, founded under Mazarin's will for young men from four provinces newly acquired by France; its buildings became the home of the Institut in 1806.

The word also applies to the secondary schools of the pre-Revolutionary teaching orders (the most prestigious were the Collège de Clermont—later Collège Louis-le-Grand—of the Jesuits in Paris and the Collège de Juilly of the Oratorians). Many were shut at the Revolution and their place taken by state-run écoles centrales and lycées. Today collège usually means a state school offering the first stage of secondary education [see Education].

[Peter France]