What makes a good news story for the UK media in higher education? Well, good news rarely makes news. The underlying approach to news in general is fundamentally antagonistic.
If the government is doing something, who’s complaining about it? If the government isn’t doing something, who’s complaining about it? If a university is doing something, is the government complaining about it; are the staff complaining about it; are the students complaining about it; are prospective students complaining about it?
You get one view, and then you find somebody who opposes it. This is known as balanced coverage.  If things are going well – if, for example, a university has won an excellent rating in teaching or research - that generally isn’t considered newsworthy, on the grounds that things should be going well.  News is when the rating is unsatisfactory.  

One major exception is any research coming out of universities which tells us something about the way we live, and in particular about our health.
Here are the higher education stories that made the news in the UK on a randomly selected day:

Dons tell of pressure on Oxford to reform:
Oxford came one step closer to handing control of its executive to outsiders yesterday after it emerged that the university was under serious government pressure to reform.
The Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph

Renowned arts college may be forced to leave its 14th-century home:
Dartington College of Arts is in talks with University College Falmouth about relocating. Alumni and former teachers include Ravi Shankar, Benjamin Britten and John Cage. Daniel Cooke, president of Dartington's student union, said: “Last week was a reading week, and then we came back to this. It was very upsetting - we had a difficult, angry meeting.”

The Guardian

Visa red tape forcing students elsewhere, report warns:
Lengthy and costly visa applications would force more than a third of international students to study elsewhere, a new report on further education colleges in the UK reveals.

The Guardian

Protest targets university's arms trade shares:
Campaigners have hit out at Heriot-Watt University for owning shares in the arms trade. Researchers at the Campaign Against Arms Trade asked all of the UK's universities for details of investments in several top arms companies, including BAE Systems, Rolls Royce and the Smiths Group, which the group claims have been involved in the supply of weapons to oppressive regimes. CAAT today said Heriot-Watt University had confirmed that it held shares in BAE Systems worth £559.77 [44,980 R.].

The Scotsman

And the health story –

Why chocolate can be good for the heart:
A wayward band of chocoholics has accidentally proved to medical science what aficionados must have always hoped - that chocolate can be good for you. Researchers in the United States found that human guinea pigs who broke the rules of a study on blood clots by eating dark chocolate increased their protection against heart attacks.

The Independent, The Guardian

There are significant differences between the coverage in national and local newspapers. Features in national newspapers would tend to focus on an issue affecting most or all institutions, or an in-depth analysis of a single institution, or of academics who are international stars or well-known personalities.
Local newspapers take a much closer interest in their local universities, but despite the fact that increasing numbers of students are going into higher education, there is still a perceived gap between universities and the community. Universities are thought of as elite organisations and bastions of privilege. This is arguably not so pronounced in the case of the “new” universities, which were former polytechnics and had a history of vocational education, but it still exists.

This manifests itself in two ways in local newspaper coverage: resentment and pride.

The resentment is frequently focused against students, who are considered to lead a wild, irresponsible lifestyle, even though this is 20 years out of date, and nearly all students now have to work to fund themselves through university. A key grievance in university towns across the country is that there are no longer enough places in university halls of residence, and students tend to live in particular areas of town. Landlords see students as a good source of income, but this is generally very unpopular with the local community, who say families are being priced out of the area and that students are untidy and disruptive.

In many towns, residents have set up community groups opposing student tenants. Student organisations are now trying to improve relations with the community. One practical innovation in several universities is that when students leave the student union at night, they are given a lollipop. This stops them singing or shouting on the way home…

But local newspapers also take enormous pride in the achievements of individual students who win awards, for example, and also in the achievements of academics, particularly when they can understand the impact of what they do. For example, Glasgow has one of the worst rates of heart disease in the world, and the readers of the local evening paper in Glasgow recently voted the professor of cardiology at Glasgow University “Scotswoman of the Year” for her work in improving health.

Since Scotland set up its own parliament in 1999, there have been quite dramatic divergences between the English and Scottish higher education systems, with a knock-on effect on media coverage. Scotland has traditionally had a more egalitarian approach to education, the norm being to attend the local comprehensive school rather than a private grammar school. Edinburgh University in Scotland and Bristol University in England both decided to relax their entrance criteria to encourage entrants from deprived backgrounds. The English story was a row, with the private school sector threatening to boycott Bristol. But in Scotland, there was no comparable row, making the reports much more positive.

The Scottish Government has abolished tuition fees for Scottish students, with fees now off the political and media agenda . This is very different from England, where students now face paying up to £3,000 a year in top-up fees.   

This is not to claim any superiority for the Scottish media, but simply to note the differences. After all, newspapers are profit-making ventures, and the way to succeed is to give readers what they want.

Olga Wojtas is Scottish Editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement