University of Strathclyde

University of Strathclyde at Glasgow, Scotland; founded 1796 as Anderson's Institution. In 1886 its name was changed to Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College, and in 1956 it became known as Royal College of Science and Technology. It was affiliated with the Univ. of Glasgow from 1913 until 1964, when it received its charter as a university and assumed its present name. It has faculties of science, engineering, arts and social studies, and business administration. The David Livingstone Institute of Overseas Development Studies, the European Policies Research Centre, the Scottish Transputer Centre, and the Turing Institute for machine intelligence are affiliated.

Strathclyde . The name was adopted in 1963 by one of Glasgow's universities, and from 1973 to 1996 was used for an administrative region: it contained 2.3 million people, nearly half Scotland's population. The region was unpopular with people living in its more rural parts, who felt it was dominated by Glasgow. This unpopularity led to the abolition of the 1973 structure and its replacement, from 1996, by nineteen all‐purpose authorities.

Strathclyde was the name of an ancient British kingdom, centred on the Clyde valley, with its capital at the natural fort of Dumbarton, and absorbed into Scotland c.1018. The name was adopted in 1963 by one of Glasgow's universities, and from 1973 to 1996 was used for an administrative region. The 1973 local government reorganization of Scotland was an attempt to rationalize the previous system of cities, burghs, and rural areas, which reflected historical rather than contemporary population patterns, into regions big enough to exploit economies of scale in services such as education, police, water, roads, and transport; smaller districts became responsible for other local authority services. Strathclyde, which incorporated Glasgow and the counties of Bute, Dunbarton, Lanark, Renfrew, Ayr, most of Argyll, and the Kilsyth area of Stirlingshire, illustrates the problems of such reorganization: it contained 2.3 million people, nearly half Scotland's population. The region was unpopular with people living in its more rural parts, who felt it was dominated by Glasgow and its surrounding industrial areas (guaranteeing a large Labour majority in the regional council), and with other regions, which felt overwhelmed by its size. Government awareness of this unpopularity and concern that the two-tier administration was inefficient, reinforced perhaps by the Conservatives eventually controlling none of the regions, led to the abolition of the 1973 structure and its replacement, from 1996, by all-purpose authorities—in Strathclyde's case, nineteen new councils, corresponding roughly to the previous districts.

Charlotte M. Lythe