Most universities have a student newspaper and many of them have been around for years — longer even than many of the nationals.

They’re populated with eager student reporters desperate to get relevant experience so they can break into the profession when they graduate, alongside others, just as eager, doing it for the wheeze. But they don’t just need journos — people are needed to handle ad sales, distribution, design and so on, so there are opportunities galore.

The styles of student papers vary as much as they do in Fleet Street — there are tabloidy gutter dwellers and high fallutin’ papers of record, propaganda sheets for the union or the university and independent bastions of integrity. Some universities, such as York, even have competing newspapers and many have not only newspapers, but arts magazines, creative writing magazines and even wood-wasters for individual clubs and societies .

Thanks to desktop publishing and colour printing, the standards reach professional heights (as the annual awards ceremonies show — yes, even student journos have their own Oscars), but also depths so low that the only place appropriate for some student papers is the toilet — although, fortunately, that’s a great place for them to get read. Captive audience, you see. (Gossip and what’s-on flyers tacked to the backs of loo cubicle doors are quite common and are known, inevitably, as bogsheets.)

But the press don’t have a media monopoly.

Many universities have their own radio stations. Sometimes they have FM licences and broadcast locally as well as on campus. But at other places, it’s a couple of guys playing their own records and transmitting a signal so weak that it barely makes it out of hearing range. Still, it’s better than nothing for trying out your fabadozie pop-picker DJ stylie.

There’s even student TV and, even though they usually broadcast on a closed circuit and with a budget that even Channel 5 would consider tight, the conditions have forced some university stations to get pretty inventive.

Not only are student media great fun to make — you have to wonder whether the readers, listeners and viewers enjoy it as much as the writers, editors and producers — they can be a big help in landing a job in the media. As often as not, rather than do a degree in media studies, you’d do better to study something totally different and throw your heart into the university newspaper, radio or TV station.

If you’re thinking along these lines, be careful you don’t get landed working for a paper that’s still produced with a John Bull printing set and which reads like a school magazine where everyone played truant. Choose a university with facilities and a reputation in media.

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