Columbia - University in NYC Colombia - Country in South America
I make so many spelling mistakes I hate to correct, but when I ready your first sentence I thought you might have meant the university.
I've been living in Bogotá for a few months and I only realised I was spelling Colombia wrong a couple of months in - pretty embarrassing.
I now notice many if not most of my English-speaking friends make the same mistake when emailing/facebooking/whatsapping me and I try to correct them as I go.
It appears Columbia is a reflex spelling of the sound of the word - I'm from the UK so haven't had that much exposure to the use of the word for the NY University, so I don't think that's the explanation in my case.
Someone should make a website for this along the lines of amispellingcolumbiacorrectly.com -> NO to spread the word ;-)
(The reflex spelling probably comes from the fact that most English speakers are primarily familiar with the English spelling of Christopher Columbus)
I meant correct in the context of trying to spell Colombia, the country name, given that's what I was talking about - obviously the spelling Columbia is correct if you're referring to anything else which actually goes by that spelling..