History At Strathclyde

I'm going to quote a rant I had in another thread, apologies for the repetition:

"The deparment there is shocking, 2nd worst in Scotland two RAEs running, 2nd worst in the teaching standards too. Infact, if you consider the fact that Caley don't teach History as a degree, they're actually the worst! *shakes fist*. Don't believe the rubbish on the Edinburgh website either- they didn't do very well in research and teaching either, they have devised an escape route by multiplying their lower score by the number of staff (because that makes all the difference) to claim they have the third best dept in the UK! Its a shocking twisting of the stats. St Andrews and Glasgow were joint best in Scotland, and amongst the large departments in the UK (40 members and above, of which there are 12), no one outside of London and Oxbridge submitted more staff at a higher standard."

And:

"I'm pretty well connected with a good few staff members at a few universities in Scotland, England and Ireland, so word gets around. At the 2001 Reseach Assessment (RAE), Strathclyde had to take a load of extra staff on, because out of the Scottish depts that taught history as a degree, I think I'm right and saying they were the only ones to not get a 5 rating. This years RAE, which works on a different scheme (grades 1-4), had a national average of 2.65/4. Strathclyde had 2.3, second lowest ahead of Caledonian, and only 5% of their staff in the top banding, as opposed to 25% at Glasgow and St Andrews, who had averages of 2.75 (I apologise for the complexity of this!). Edinburgh had a score of 2.6, but claimed if you multiply the 2.6 with their huuuuge department, (i.e. 70 members of staff to Glasgow's 50) then you get a bigger number, and they used this to make up a new table, which surprise, surprise, put them third in the UK behind Oxbridge. A few academics here and in St Andrews were far from happy at this blatant twisting of the numbers to put a positive spin on a bad result. as for the teaching standards, all three were very good, identical infact with the top score possible, but Strathclyde was again the only one in Scotland (outside Caledonian which doesnt do a history degree) not to get a score of 'broad confidence'."

However, it really depends on what you want. I doubt many employers would know the difference between the Strathclyde, Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh depts, they'd just be looking for a reputable name and a good score. In that case, you probably wont be disadvantaged at all. If you want to stay in the profession and go into academia, then it will be considerably more important, as Glasgow and Edinburgh get much, much more funding for to support postgraduate students in research due to their much better profiles. A good degree and good references from Strathclyde won't stop you getting postgrad offers though, it just might hurt the funding aspirations (Russell Group students statistically do much better on average at gaining grants). If you like the course there, go for it. I'm in History for the long haul now, so I know more about departments than most employers, so they wont know/care what the RAE scores were. Glasgow and Edinburgh are much better resourced though, with more staff and bigger libraries, but again, Strathclyde's isnt poor in this respect, just not excellent. Prof Devine at Edinburgh is a Strathclyde graduate, and the head of Scottish History at Glasgow also hails from there, so it does produce quality students, it is just not statistically producing the quality of research and teaching in Scotland that the other units, particularly Glasgow and St Andrews, are.

Really? That's a surprise to be honest. At the open day, Strathclyde seemed really passionate about the subject and went through everything we'd be taught and the lecturer seemed really enthusiastic about the subject whereas at Glasgow they didn't even have a talk about history... only economic history or something.

Are you sure you were in the right faculty open day? Glasgow has the school of historical studies, which is split into the Dept. of Economic and Social History and the Dept. of History (which itself is subdivided into three areas: Medieval, Modern and Scottish). The former is in the Faculty of Law, Business and Social Sciences and is opposite the Adam Smith Building, the latter in the Faculty of Arts, opposite the main gate. They share a lot of common bits, keep themselves to themselves usually, they might make the odd reference to each other, but thats about it. I'd imagine you were at an ESH meeting to be honest, that sounds the most likely.

Of course I can't talk about what you were told at open days from lecturers, aside from enthusiasm in one particular talk isn't a good indicator of quality generally. Its been ongoing since the RAE and QAA standards came in, that Strathclyde has been pretty poor- even Stirling, the other 1960s institution (assuming Dundee still believes itself to be an ancient University) outperforms it. This is the danger of entry requirements though- I know people who apply for Strathclyde without really understanding things, assuming the low entry at Stirling (BBBC) equates to poorer quality. As another poster on here says, the Engineering and Business Schools at Strathclyde edge Glasgows, the law school is much of a muchness, the odd subject here and there is higher in the league tables, but thats about it. Its very much a University with its specialisms. Glasgow, Edinburgh and the like, are much better across the board, if not quite so brilliant in the odd area Strathclyde really focusses on.

Yeah there wasn't any history talks so we just went to economic & social history. Only about 10 people were there

Yeah, not many people know Economic and Social History exists as a separate degree, only about a dozen Universities in the UK teach it on its own, as opposed to merely modules in a wider history degree. There's only about 30 or so enrolled in the honours program, as opposed to about 120 in History. I'm surprised there wasn't a talk, I was asked to get involved with one the other year, I'd have thought there would have been... perhaps it was on at a different time or something, but as I don't know, I really can't comment