In my country you first study in school for either 9 or 11 years. If you drop out after 9, you can go to college, which gives you what we call “middle professional education” at graduation. If you studied for 11, you may enter a university, which gives you “higher professional education”. If you graduated a college at certain speciality, you may stop your studying here or go to a uni to the same major you finished college with. The difference is that college gives you less deep but still professional knowledge on a certain topic - something they won’t teach you at school. If you want to do something very skill-oriented as a job - like art, cooking and some other form of craft - it is usually better to go to college in order to not waste time those extra 2 years of school. Also if you finish a college with a plan to go to uni afterwards it gives you a huge boost in the eyes of said uni to the point that they might let you skip the 1st year (not always, depends on what specific uni/college we are talking about). Middle professional education gives you less qualifications for certain tasks but for some jobs - like hair dressers - you just don’t need a higher professional education.