Glasgow Caledonian has spent more than £70 million transforming previously mediocre facilities into a single campus that does justice to a modern university of more than 17,000 students.

Only Edinburgh, Glasgow and West of Scotland universities are bigger north of the border. More than 80 per cent of the buildings are new or have been upgraded, and improvements are still being made.

The health building brings together teaching and research facilities and includes a virtual hospital, where students can hone their clinical and interpersonal skills.

The Saltire Centre, which has brought all library and student services together for the first time, opened in 2006 with study spaces for 1,800 students.

Participation

With the accent firmly on widening participation in higher education, the university will always struggle in league tables such as ours, but it is well-regarded by employers, and applications have been healthy until a small decline set in at the start of 2007 that continued 12 months later.

Caledonian is among the top UK universities for attracting students from areas without a tradition of higher education, and more than a third of its undergraduates come from working-class homes.

The university has argued forcefully that extending access should be rewarded more generously if such students are to receive the support they need to make a success of higher education. Previous performance indicators suggested that one undergraduate in six would fail to complete the degree they embarked upon.

Although the latest projection is closer to one in five, that is still significantly more than the UK average for Caledonian’s courses and entry qualifications. The university has introduced a series of measures designed to improve retention.

Telltale signs are monitored, such as non-attendance at lectures, and better academic, social and financial support offered to those at risk of dropping out. Consolidated on its city-centre campus, Caledonian’s original two sites have now been reduced to one with the sale of the Park Campus, in the west end of the city, to Glasgow University.

Strengths

Leisure facilities have been improved with a new building for the health faculty, opened by Thabo Mbeki, who named it in honour of his father. Physiotherapy was the only subject since chemistry’s success in 1993 to be rated Excellent for teaching, and Caledonian now boasts among the most extensive health programmes in Britain.

A string of other subjects (mainly on the science side) were considered Highly Satisfactory. Business is the other big area, the Caledonian Business School boasting more undergraduates than any other institution in Scotland, with over 1,000 in each year group.

The university pioneered subjects such as entrepreneurial studies and risk management – the only university in the country to do so – and offers highly specialist degrees, such as tourism management, fashion marketing, leisure management and consumer protection.

Degrees in all areas are strongly vocational, and are complemented by a wide portfolio of professional courses. A high proportion of students choose sandwich courses, and the university operates on a modular system. The REAL@Caledonian online student facility combines enhanced learning technology with a informal cyber-café atmosphere.

The legacy of Queen’s College, which catered mainly for women, has ensured that the proportion of female students is the highest of any university in Britain. Sports and social facilities have been among the priorities in the building programme. Some students find that the high proportion of their peers living at home detracts from the social scene, but Glasgow is a very lively city with a large student population.

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