The nature of higher education in further education colleges is poorly understood, even though it is central to government policies on expansion, diversity and widening participation in English higher education. One reason has to do with scale. Another has to do with complexity. A final reason has to do with their status as further education institutions. By definition, colleges are institutions predominantly concerned with education at levels below higher education. This article provides a summary picture of contemporary college-taught higher education in England, together with a consideration of its claims to distinctiveness and its pattern of development since the Dearing report in 1997 which recommended a "special mission" for colleges in sub-bachelor undergraduate education. The evidence and analysis for this primer is drawn from a research study commissioned by the UK government in 2011 and published in 2012 (Parry et al. 2012). The administrative statistics reported in the study are for 2009-10 and, unless otherwise indicated, this is the base year for the enumeration here.