Community colleges offer associates (2-year) degrees. 4-year colleges and universities offer bachelors (4-year) degrees. The bachelors is a higher degree, but it really depends on what you want to do with your degree. Public colleges tend to be cheaper, offer more majors, and are larger. Private colleges tend to be more expensive (but have large endowments and can offer a lot of scholarships), smaller, and offer the basic majors - some will be associated with a religion, but most are not (most liberal arts colleges are secular, and they're all private). Again, where you want to go depends a lot on what you want to study.