History and Sociology
UCAS Code: LV31
Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) - BA (Hons)
Entry requirements
A level
International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme
Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma (first teaching from September 2016)
Scottish Higher
over 1 sitting or AABBB over 2 sittings
UCAS Tariff
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About this course
If you really want to get a handle on the modern world, it is essential to understand the past. How did America become a superpower? Would women have got the right to vote without struggle? Why do people empower authoritarian leaders? How does climate shape society? History at Stirling allows you to explore these and many other pressing questions, guided by a committed team of historians passionate about their subjects. You will develop your knowledge of the world while acquiring intellectual and personal skills much in demand in the labour market. Stirling is different: in the context of a friendly department with approachable staff, we offer a unique breadth and chronological depth of options at honours level. We offer a range of courses on American, African, European, British and Scottish history that only few other (and much larger) institutions can match. You will explore reform and revolution, war, ideas, social movements, historical figures, race, gender, religion, democracy, the environment. In addition, thanks to the flexibility of Stirling’s academic programmes, you can study history in combination with other subjects, such as education, politics, languages, media studies and many more. The first two years provide the strong foundations that any student of history needs, while years three and four allow you to choose from an ample selection of country and thematic specialisms. The final year allows you to become a researcher yourself and thereby practice the skills you have learned and hone your analytical and problem-solving skills for life beyond university. You will have the opportunity to do one Special Subject, working closely with our staff, leading experts in their fields, in small groups, hands on cutting-edge historical research themes, using real primary sources. This level of in-depth study runs in parallel to the final year dissertation, a personal project in which you show that you have mastered the knowledge, the skills and the autonomy of the well-rounded university graduate.
Do you want to understand better how society works? Are you keen to know more about the purpose, processes and outcomes of social welfare, both here and abroad? Why and how do people break the law? How can the criminal justice system define this and how do we police, prosecute and punish people? Our courses look at the nature of social change, social differentiation, the construction and definition of social problems and the maintenance of social order as well as broader questions of process and policy. And we offer an international and comparative approach covering topics that analyse society and welfare issues in various countries. We have particular expertise covering Scotland, the UK, the European Union, Western and Central Europe, Australasia, North America and Latin America. In your first two years you will take three subjects each semester. One of these is a core subject for your degree, but you can choose the other two from Faculties across the University. For example, you could take Sociology with English or another language, Social Policy with Marketing or Criminology with Law. The key benefits of this system are that you can change the emphasis of your degree as you progress, change from full-time to part-time if you need to, change your degree subject(s) and not until midway through your second year do you need to decide what your final degree subject(s) will be. Many of our students go on to complete Combined Degrees with subject such as Law, History, Education, Politics, Philosophy, Business Studies, Spanish, Computing Science and Psychology.
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The Uni
University of Stirling
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See your living costsWhat students say
We've crunched the numbers to see if overall student satisfaction here is high, medium or low compared to students studying this subject(s) at other universities.
How do students rate their degree experience?
The stats below relate to the general subject area/s at this university, not this specific course. We show this where there isn’t enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
History
Teaching and learning
Assessment and feedback
Resources and organisation
Student voice
Who studies this subject and how do they get on?
Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)
Sociology
Teaching and learning
Assessment and feedback
Resources and organisation
Student voice
Who studies this subject and how do they get on?
Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)
After graduation
The stats in this section relate to the general subject area/s at this university – not this specific course. We show this where there isn't enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
History
What are graduates doing after six months?
This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.
Top job areas of graduates
What do graduate employment figures really tell you?History is a very popular subject (although numbers have fallen of late) — in 2015, over 10,000 UK students graduated in a history-related course. Obviously, there aren't 11,000 jobs as historians available every year, but history is a good, flexible degree that allows graduates to go into a wide range of different jobs, and consequently history graduates have an unemployment rate comparable to the national graduate average. Many — probably most — jobs for graduates don't ask for a particular degree to go into them and history graduates are well set to take advantage. That's why so many go into jobs in the finance industry, human resources, marketing, PR and events management, as well as the more obvious roles in education, welfare and the arts. Around one in five history graduates went into further study last year. History and teaching were the most popular further study subjects for history graduates, but law, journalism, and politics were also popular postgraduate courses.
Sociology
What are graduates doing after six months?
This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.
Top job areas of graduates
What do graduate employment figures really tell you?We have quite a lot of sociology graduates, although numbers fell last year. But graduates still do pretty well. Most sociology graduates go straight into work when they complete their degrees, and a lot of graduates go into jobs in social professions such as recruitment, education, community and youth work, and housing. An important option for a sociology graduate is social work - and we're short of people willing to take this challenging but rewarding career. Sociology is a flexible degree and you can find graduates from the subject in pretty much every reasonable job — obviously, you don't find many doctors or engineers, but you do find them in finance, the media, healthcare, marketing and even IT. Sociology graduates taking further study often branch out into other qualifications, like teaching, law, psychology, HR and even maths, so don’t think a sociology degree restricts you to just one set of options.
What about your long term prospects?
Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.
Sorry, no information to show
This is usually because there were too few respondents in the data we receive to be able to provide results about the subject at this university.
Sociology
The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.
£15k
£19k
£23k
Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.
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This information comes from the National Student Survey, an annual student survey of final-year students. You can use this to see how satisfied students studying this subject area at this university, are (not the individual course).
We calculate a mean rating of all responses to indicate whether this is high, medium or low compared to the same subject area at other universities.
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This information is from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).
You can use this to get an idea of who you might share a lecture with and how they progressed in this subject, here. It's also worth comparing typical A-level subjects and grades students achieved with the current course entry requirements; similarities or differences here could indicate how flexible (or not) a university might be.
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Post-six month graduation stats:
This is from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Survey, based on responses from graduates who studied the same subject area here.
It offers a snapshot of what grads went on to do six months later, what they were earning on average, and whether they felt their degree helped them obtain a 'graduate role'. We calculate a mean rating to indicate if this is high, medium or low compared to other universities.
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Graduate field commentary:
The Higher Education Careers Services Unit have provided some further context for all graduates in this subject area, including details that numbers alone might not show
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The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset combines HRMC earnings data with student records from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
While there are lots of factors at play when it comes to your future earnings, use this as a rough timeline of what graduates in this subject area were earning on average one, three and five years later. Can you see a steady increase in salary, or did grads need some experience under their belt before seeing a nice bump up in their pay packet?
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