Founded in 1451, the University of Glasgow is the fourth oldest university in the English-speaking world and is one of the top 100 of the world's universities. It welcomes students from more than 140 countries worldwide and has around 29,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students with a global community of over 219,000 alumni.

The University is a major employer in the city of Glasgow with more than 8,000 staff, including more than 3,400 research and teaching staff -  has annual research income of more than £179m - and is a founding member of Universitas 21, an international grouping of universities dedicated to setting worldwide standards for higher education.  It includes among its alumni, the father of economics Adam Smith, Scotland’s architect of devolution Donald Dewar and renowned physicist and engineer Lord Kelvin.