The cult of the professional manager. To be honest though until recently I thought american college was just the last years of high school plus maybe the first year of university (a bit like a 6th form college). But that is because it looks like high school in movies and you can't study the things we associate with university - medicine, law etc.
It's very confusing since people use the term college/university somewhat interchangeably in the U.S. The term college in the US can mean a few different things. And when I first saw the UK term for college I was a bit confused in return. BTW as I'm sure you know most movies don't really show what life on a U.S. university campus is like very realistically.
There are a few different definitions of college here in the U.S.
1) An institution is refereed to as a university if it gives out graduate degree's of any sort Masters, PhD's, Law degree. This can be in addition to getting BA's or without. A College typically only gives out Associates (AA - 2 yr) or Bachelors (BA, BS, BFA) degree's.
2) A college might be a "part" of a university often designated by the type of degree but not always. For example a university having a college of Art, college of science, college of liberal arts.
3) And then the even more generic term where 'college' is just used as where a student goes after H.S. to study. The term I want my kids to go to 'college' usually just refers sending a student to any form of higher education.
There are different types of colleges that aren't part of universities. Community colleges that mostly give AA & technical degree's. Although that is changing and some give out BA's. These typically don't have dorms. And the professors don't typically need PhD's in their field. Many have programs so one can transfer to a '4 year' institution after completing a course of study. In contrast are small liberal arts colleges that are small private institutions that usually only give BA degrees. These colleges are small usually less than 2K students, usually expect 4 years living in a dorm.
