Today's news

Staff at risk in RAE run-up
Universities are moving to transfer weak researchers into teaching-only posts or make them redundant to improve their scores in the next research assessment exercise. The first signs of manoeuvring among institutions in the run-up to the RAE look likely to exacerbate a growing backlash against the exercise. Members of the House of Commons science and technology committee this week called for the 2008 RAE to be abandoned.
( Times Higher )

Online project to promote the arts
An entrepreneur plans to raise awareness of the arts and classical music in schools and universities through new publishing and online library projects. Klaus Heymann, chairman and founder of Naxos, the classical music group, is in talks with local education authorities and universities about trials for an online music library offering 85,000 tracks for students, teachers and lecturers.
( Financial Times )

'Best-educated generation yet', declares Miliband
The "Blair generation" will be the best educated in history, the school standards minister, David Miliband, promised yesterday as he backed a drive to engage parents more in their children's education.
( Guardian )

Survey of commons maps buried history
English Heritage has announced the first survey of the "people's land" - urban commons that have been protected from development for up to 1,000 years. Significant archaeological finds are expected from up to four years' research into swaths of open space close to the heart of some of the country's busiest cities and towns, from undisturbed Bronze Age burial sites to temporary medieval fairgrounds.
( Guardian )

£1m clues to life of Conan Doyle
A lost archive of letters and documents providing an insight into Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's life has fetched £948,546 at auction. The 3,000 letters, notes and hand-written manuscripts had been thought lost for 40 years until they were found a few months ago in the offices of a London solicitor. The auction at Christie's in London, which led to the archive being split into almost 140 lots, was criticised by some enthusiasts of the Sherlock Holmes author. They said that it should have been kept together and preserved for the nation.
( Daily Telegraph, Times )

Classic waste of time
Cambridge graduate Catherine Nixey asks what's the point of a classics degree?
( Independent )