A campus is the grounds and buildings of a school, college, or university. When you picture a campus, imagine an area where multiple school buildings stand together: classrooms, libraries, cafeterias, gyms, and sports fields all in one place. Students walk between these buildings throughout their day, and the whole area belongs to the school.

Early American colleges were often built on large open fields outside cities, and people started calling these school grounds a campus. Today, even city schools squeezed between streets use this term.

Elementary schools usually have a small campus with just a few buildings. University campuses can be huge, almost like small towns, with dormitories where students live, multiple dining halls, research labs, and even their own police and fire departments. Some famous university campuses, like Harvard or Stanford, have dozens of buildings spread across hundreds of acres.

People also use campus for other large facilities with multiple buildings, like a hospital campus or a corporate campus. But the word strongly connects to schools and learning. When someone says they're “on campus,” they mean they're somewhere within that school's grounds, not out in the surrounding town or city.