Suppose I have the dataset in the following format:

```
col1    col2     col3      col4         col5 (to be predicted)
12      13       4         primary      label1
1       15       2         secondary    label2
5       7        8         primary      label3
14      12       44        college      label4

```

col5 needs to be predicted for some test data using col1, col2, col3 and col4

During training, col1, col2, col3 can be feeded as such in an array to the classifier but how to feed col4. I am aware that this is categorical and need to be converted to numeric type, but even after assigning some number, it will still remain as nominal type.

So if primary=1, secondary=2 and college=3, the numbers 1,2 and 3 cant be compared as per their magnitude because they are still like labels, with no numerical significance.

So how should I proceed after this step... should they be normalized ? or any further should be done ?