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I'm learning Japanese on Duolingo and they're starting to teach me some
vocabulary about schooling. Things like 大学, 中学, 小学, and... 高校?

I know that 学校 is the kanji spelling of "school," but why does "high school"
use the 校 kanji, whereas all the other forms use the 学 kanji? What's the
difference between these two kanji/why is one more appropriate for high-school
specifically?

* * *

James' answer below has informed me that 日本語 has abbreviations for some of its
words, in this case from 高等学校 to 高校. My question now becomes, "Why does 高等学校
get abbreviated to 高校, keeping the 校, but all other forms of school keep the 学
instead?"
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2020-02-03T07:52:47.910
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question
kanji etymology abbreviations
Why does the word for "high school" use 校 instead of 学?
高校 is an abbreviation of 高等学校, which does include the character 学。
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2020-02-03T08:26:21.160
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answer
First of all, 小学, 中学 and 高校 are abbreviations. The full (non-abbreviated)
forms are:

  * 小学校
  * 中学校
  * 高等学校
  * 大学

You can already see some inconsistencies. Only 高等学校 has two characters before
学. 大学 are officially 大学 and has no 校 in the first place! (The word 大学校 exists,
but [it refers to something
different](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/36002/5010).)

After the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese education system underwent repeated
reforms, which is too complicated to explain here (see [these
charts](https://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/html/others/detail/1318188.htm)).
Roughly speaking, 大学 was a very old word borrowed from Chinese, and it
remained unchanged. The name 高等学校 was established relatively later as a
special type of school for selected elites, and that's why it looks different
from 小学校/中学校. These words have different origins and histories, so it's no
surprising that they were abbreviated differently.

[学 and 校 both means _school_
anyway](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/15111/5010), so 高学 seems equally
reasonable as the abbreviation of 高等学校. I could not find why exactly 高学 was
not chosen, but I guess there were some practical reason in those days. Maybe
someone thought こうがく was confusing because there was already the word 工学
(engineering)?
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answer
Additional post to provide a bit more detail.

### Appearance of 高校

[FWIW](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/for_what_it%27s_worth#English), it
appears that the term 高校 [first appears around
1949](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%AB%98%E6%A0%A1-495063#E7.B2.BE.E9.81.B8.E7.89.88.20.E6.97.A5.E6.9C.AC.E5.9B.BD.E8.AA.9E.E5.A4.A7.E8.BE.9E.E5.85.B8),
shortly after the [1948 promulgation of a new Japanese educational
law](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%AB%98%E7%AD%89%E5%AD%A6%E6%A0%A1),
reformulating the educational system.

### Japanese abbreviation patterns

Japanese abbreviations are much more commonly derived by choosing the first
component of each two-character portion of a larger compound. Thus,
[世]{●}界[銀]{●}行 ("World Bank") is abbreviated as [世]{●}[銀]{●}, [下]{●}院[議]{●}員
("member of the lower house of the Diet") is abbreviated as [下]{●}[議]{●},
[保]{●}健[体]{●}育 ("health and physical education", the subject taught in
schools) is abbreviated as [保]{●}[体]{●}, etc.

We even see this pattern in borrowed terms, where the first component isn't a
kanji, but instead (usually) the first two mora (kana). For example,
[ワ]{●}[ー]{●}ド[プ]{●}[ロ]{●}セッサー is shortened to [ワ]{●}[ー]{●}[プ]{●}[ロ]{●},
[ス]{●}[タ]{●}ー[バ]{●}ックス is shortened to [ス]{●}[タ]{●}[バ]{●},
[コ]{●}[ス]{●}チューム[プ]{●}[レ]{●}イ is shortened to [コ]{●}[ス]{●}[プ]{●}[レ]{●}, etc.

As such, we'd _expect_ to see [高]{●}等[学]{●}校 abbreviated to *[高]{●}[学]{●}. But
instead, [高]{●}等学[校]{●} is abbreviated a bit oddly, as [高]{●}[校]{●}

### Reason for using 高校 as the abbreviation for 高等学校

I cannot find anything definitively explaining why 高等学校 was abbreviated as 高校
instead of 高学, but @naruto's guess seems like a good one -- [there are many
homophones for
こうがく](https://www.weblio.jp/content/%E3%81%93%E3%81%86%E3%81%8C%E3%81%8F),
several of which appear to be in common use even in the spoken language, and
most of which already end in 学 in the written language. While [there are also
many homophones for
こうこう](https://ejje.weblio.jp/content/%E3%81%93%E3%81%86%E3%81%93%E3%81%86),
fewer of these appear to be in common use in spoken Japanese, and the only one
with the 校 character is 高校, which may leave less room for ambiguity.
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