From today's UK papers

The Guardian

The Victoria and Albert Museum has been given six months to justify its existence to an increasingly apathetic public who do not seem to know what it is for.

United Kingdom students will gain ground from a report on United States student borrowing, which shows they are getting deeper into debt.

Untrained, poorly paid postgraduates are providing up to half of all university teaching in the United Kingdom.

Radical measures are needed to shore up demand for study places in science and engineering.

Thousands of students have been told that they have not passed key skills after all.

Teacher training is to become compulsory for all further education lecturers. Will the proposed new courses be up to scratch?

The Independent

History books depict men as the adventurous sex who travel in search of conquest and discovery, but in reality it was their womenfolk who tended to settle far from their place of birth, a study of the genetic history of British men and women by scientists at University College London and the University of California reports.

The Times

Diana Bowles, head of biochemistry at the University of York, is trying to save 12 breeds of British sheep, rarer than the giant panda, from extinction by foot-and-mouth by collecting embryos to freeze in a gene bank.

Financial Times

Japanese students, wary after dotcom failures, are heading once again for blue-chip companies that they consider safer havens.

Daily Mail

Newcastle is in danger of acquiring a reputation as the British city with the least educated population, after official figures revealed that it has fewer people with university degrees than anywhere else in the country.

• Get daily news from The THES by email. Sign up for a free trial .