JSON+Node.js - Unexpected token o

Your colleges variable is already a valid JavaScript Object. You do not have to use JSON.parse on it.

JSON.parse expects a String as first argument, but you provide an Object. Thus it is coerced to a String looking like the one you see in the Error message.

For the rest of your code, you might want to take a look at Express or Zappa to be able to write the code a bit more compact ;)