Taking its name from the historic Kingdom of Strathclyde, its combined enrollment of 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students ranks it Scotland's third-largest university, drawn with its staff from over 100 countries.

Undergraduate students could qualify for degrees of the University of Glasgow or the equivalent Associate of the Royal College of Science and Technology (ARCST).

Between the granting of the Charter and the late 1970s, the university expanded rapidly in size, in tandem with the ongoing regeneration of the Townhead area of the city where the campus is located.

The campus grew initially from the massive Royal College Building on George Street, which was originally the location of the former Anderson's Institution.

Originally built as the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College Building, it now houses Bioscience, Chemistry, and Electronic and Electrical Engineering.

The early 1960s also saw the fruition of a collaborative deal between the then Royal College and the Corporation of Glasgow to regenerate the Richmond Street site opposite the main buildings.

In 2012, Historic Scotland granted Listed Building Status (grade B) to it, along with the Wolfson Centre designed by Morris and Steedman Architects.

2012 also saw the 20th Century Society select the Architecture Building as their 'Building of the Month' for September due to its cultural significance and enduring appeal.

Sited on Cathedral Street in Glasgow, the 8,000 m2 (86,000 sq ft) building is the gateway to the university campus and city centre from the motorway.

[citation needed] In 1973, the university reached an agreement with the publisher William Collins, Sons to purchase its former printing works along Cathedral Street and St James's Road.

The University of Strathclyde Centre for Sports, Health and Wellbeing is a leisure facility undergoing construction situated adjacent to 100 Cathedral Street.

It is situated in the Curran Building, a former warehouse and printing works built by William Collins, Sons in 1960, but purchased by the university in the mid-1970s and converted for academic use between 1978 and 1981.

The nine-storey, steel-framed building can accommodate around 1,200 workers from numerous fields, including engineering, researching and project management.

[35] In the 2024 league table published by The Guardian, Strathclyde ranked in the Top 10 for Civil Engineering (3rd); Sociology and Social Policy (4th); Sports Science (5th); Politics (6th); Health professions (6th); and Hospitality, event management and tourism (10th).

[37] Times Higher Education (THE) placed History at Strathclyde 9th for research intensity in a field of 83 UK universities in the 2014 REF.

[38] Strathclyde is placed in the top 20 of European business schools in the Financial Times Global MBA Rankings.

Plans for the Catapult Centre for Offshore Renewable Energy were announced at Strathclyde by Business Secretary Vince Cable.

Engineers at the university are leading the €4 million, Europe-wide Stardust project, a research-based training network investigating the removal of space debris and the deflection of asteroids.

[6] Since 2016 the Wellcome Trust has invested over £3 million of funding awards in the university's Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, for research projects, teaching and training programmes, and to build Medical Humanities partnerships in Africa and Asia.

Alumni of Strathclyde and its predecessors (the Andersonian Institute and the Royal College of Science and Technology) include the scientists; William Ramsay, Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry (1904); John Logie Baird, inventor of the first working television;[52] Henry Faulds, physician, missionary and scientist who developed of fingerprinting;[52] James Young, chemist best known for his method of distilling paraffin from coal and oil shales;[52] Professor John Curtice, a renowned political commentator, Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

In politics: Annabel Goldie, Baroness Goldie, Leader of the Scottish Conservative Party, member of the House of Lords, Minister of State for Defense; Helen Liddell, Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke, minister in Blair government, a House of Lords member, former British High Commissioner to Australia, former Minister for Trade and Industry, former Minister for Transport, former Economic Secretary of the Treasury, the first female General Secretary of the Scottish Labour Party at the age of 26 from 1977 to 1978; John McFall, Baron McFall of Alcluith, Senior Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords; Alex Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme, the first elected Vice-President of Nigeria; Teuea Toatu, Vice-President of Kiribati; Fahri Hamzah, an Indonesian politician and currently a deputy speaker of the People's Representative Council; Omar Abdullah, Indian politician, Chief Minister of J & K state, former Minister of State for External Affairs;[53] Jay Sutherland, Scottish political theorist and activist;[54] Nikos Pappas, Greek Minister of Digital Policy, Telecommunications and Media in Alexis Tsipras' cabinet; David Gordon Mundell, Secretary of the State for Scotland in Cameron and May governments, Conservative MP; Eduardo Doryan, Costa Rican Minister of Education; Ann McKechin, Member of Parliament, former Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland; Jim Murphy, Labour Member of Parliament and former Secretary of State for Scotland; Malcolm Gray Bruce, Baron Bruce of Bennachie, Deputy Leader of Liberal Democrats, Chair of the International Development Committee, Leader of the Liberal Democrats in Scotland, member of House of Lords; Lady Elish Angiolini KC, former Lord Advocate and Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford; Jim Murphy leader of Labour Party in Scotland in 2014–2015; Lord Bracadale, Senator of the College of Justice, Lord Commissioner of Justiciary; Sir Simon Stevens (healthcare manager) is a Chief Executive of the National Health Service; John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith, the Director-General of the BBC; Michael Peter Evans-Freke, 12th Baron Carbery, an Irish peer; John Ruaridh Grant Mackenzie, 5th Earl of Cromartie, a Scottish peer, the current chief of Clan Mackenzie; Alexander Macmillan, 2nd Earl of Stockton, Conservative MP, member of the House of Lords, grandson of prime minister Harold Macmillan; Nazir Karamagi, Tanzanian Minister of Energy and Minerals, Minister of Industry, Trade and Marketing; Francis Nhema, Zimbabwean Minister of Youth Development, Minister of Environment; Clive Soley, Baron Soley, Labour MP, member of the House of Lords; Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, Bangladeshi Minister of Local Government and Engineering Department; Ken Kandodo, Malawi's Minister of Finance; Iain Peebles, Lord Bannatyne, Senator of the College of Justice; Ian McAllister, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University; Mark Blyth, Scottish-American political scientist and a professor of international political economy at Brown University; K M Baharul Islam, Professor and Chair of Public Policy and Government Center at Indian Institute of Management Kashipur; Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study; Sandra Currie Osborne, Labour MP, a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee; Zulkieflimansyah, Indonesian Governor of West Nusa Tenggara; Muhammad Khan Achakzai, Pakistani Governor of Balochistan; Tommy Sheridan, Scottish politician; Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, former MP for Ochil and South Perthshire; Willie Coffey, MSP for Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley; Alice Lau, Member of Parliament for Lanang and Deputy Speaker of Dewan Rakyat[55] In business: John Barton, Chairman of Next plc and EasyJet; Sir Thomas Hunter, Entrepreneur and Philanthropist;[6] Jim McColl, Scotland's richest man;[6]John Giannandrea, Vice President at Google, head of Google Search; Brian Souter, co-founder of the Stagecoach Group; Sanjay Jha, chief executive officer of Motorola; chief executive officer of Motorola Mobile Devices; Alastair Storey, chief executive officer of Global Foundries, chairman and chief executive officer of Westbury Street Holdings;[56] and Andrew Wyllie, civil engineer, chief executive officer of the Costain Group and president of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

[57][58] Other alumni include: David Livingstone, explorer in Africa and medical missionary; Tom Devine, historian; Lady Elish Angiolini, the first female Solicitor General and Lord Advocate of Scotland; Alex Kapranos, prominent architect James McKissack, lead singer of rock band Franz Ferdinand; Lauren Mayberry, lead singer of synthpop band Chvrches; Aileen McGlynn, Scottish paralympic gold medal-winning tandem cyclist and world record holder; Chris Sawyer, creator of RollerCoaster Tycoon and Transport Tycoon video game series; Dean T. Beirne, comedian and finalist of the BBC New Comedy Awards in 2023 Academics associated with the university include; James Blyth, generated electrical power from wind;[52] Sir Samuel Curran, inventor of the Scintillation counter;[59] Thomas Graham, chemist who formulated the law of diffusion of gases;[52] Andrew Ure, physician and founder of Andersonian Institution;[52] Matthew Charteris, taught medicine at Anderson's from 1876 to 1880.

James Croll (self-taught scientist) who initially worked as a janitor of the university's museum was awarded an honorary doctorate.