BBC News Report Jan 2015 with transcript video

Among new university graduates in India and China, unemployment – and underemployment – are rising fast. Some fear that large numbers of educated, underemployed young people could cause social problems in these countries.

In India, five million students graduate from university each year. However, one in three graduates up to the age of 29 is unemployed.

In China more than 7 million students will graduate from the country’s universities in 2014, and the number is steadily increasing. Unemployment among new graduates is somewhere between 15% and 30%.

Chinese workers without degrees are more willing to take factory jobs. However, the payment for factory jobs today is often higher than the payment for low-level office jobs.

Joseph Cheng, a professor at City University of Hong Kong, says that China’s leadership is extremely worried about graduate unemployment.

Craig Jeffrey, a professor at Oxford University, is an expert on India’s unemployed youth. He describes a similar situation in India. Government reports, he says, often describe underemployed graduates as “hostile to the state”.

There are more than 160,000 underemployed graduates in Beijing alone. Around one third of them graduated from China’s most prestigious universities.

But, surprisingly, researchers have found that these underemployed graduates in China and India are generally not angry – they are often calm and quite optimistic, because they still believe that they will find suitable jobs.

graduate (noun)
a person who has a degree from a university

unemployment
the situation of not having a job

underemployment
the situation of not having enough work, or not having work which uses your skills

social
related to society

graduate (verb)
to finish a university degree course successfully

steadily
at a continuous rate, without stopping

willing
ready and enthusiastic to do something

leadership
(here) the group of people who are the leaders of an organisation

expert
a person with special knowledge on a particular subject

hostile
unfriendly, and ready to fight

state
a country, and especially the government

prestigious
admired and respected

calm
peaceful; not worried or excited

optimistic
believing that good things will happen in the future

The Taj Mahal is India’s most famous and romantic landmark. Soon, people who want to see the Taj Mahal will be able to take a virtual tour, using Google Street View, without leaving their homes.

The Taj Mahal is being mapped digitally using the Trekker, a special camera that creates 360-degree images. These images can make viewers feel that they are walking around the monument or landmark.

Google plans to use the Trekker camera to collect images of all the world’s most beloved landmarks. It has already been used to map the Grand Canyon and the world’s tallest skyscraper, Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

Today, about 80% of holidaymakers research their trips online before booking their holidays. Online virtual tours of hotels and destinations, like the Taj Mahal, are becoming an important way for holiday companies to market their products.

But is it possible for ‘virtual holidays’ to replace real world holidays completely?

Stuart Hetherington, chief executive of Holovis, a company which specializes in this kind of technology, believes this is possible.

In the future, he says, the walls of our homes could become giant TV screens, giving us extremely vivid 3D experiences. This technology could allow us to take ‘virtual vacations’, while staying at home.

“But I think virtual vacations are still a long way off,” he admits.

We can expect tourists to keep visiting the Taj Mahal for a long time yet.

romantic
(here) beautiful; having a strong effect on your emotions

landmark
a building or a natural feature which is well-known, or easy to see from a distance

virtual
something you can see or experience through a computer

image
picture

monument
a building, statue or structure which is famous or important

beloved
loved very much

to map
to make a map of something

skyscraper
a very tall building

holidaymaker
someone who is on holiday, or planning a holiday

destination
a place where someone is going, or where they are planning to go

to market
to advertise and tell people about something, in a way which encourages them to buy it

chief executive
the leader of a company or organisation

specialize
to have a lot of skill or knowledge about something

vivid
very colourful and lifelike

In the 1970s, many experimental schools appeared all over Britain. Lessons were not compulsory in these schools, and there were no timetables, no rules, and no uniforms. The pupils, not the teachers, made the decisions. These free schools had a reputation for being anarchic.

Maureen Breen started attending a free school in Liverpool in 1971.

“We used to go in and the teachers would say ‘what do you want to do today’? We’d never pick lessons. We used to go to the zoo or the pictures” she says.

While she was a pupil at the Scotland Road Free School, Maureen cannot remember doing any lessons at all. Her teachers tried to persuade her to take some exams, but she refused. Instead, she enjoyed cooking, and she used to make huge pans of soup for the other children. So when she was 16, she left school and worked as a caterer.

However, she had no qualifications, no exam results, none of the pieces of paper which help people to get better jobs. So she went back to college to study for exams in maths and English.

Today, Maureen has a more conventional life. She is married with three children, and lives in a neat house in Liverpool. She works as a secretary for the National Health Service.

None of the Scotland Road kids became millionaires. However, many ex-pupils say they learned important life skills while at the school.

experimental
based on new or untested ideas

compulsory
something which must happen, because of a rule

reputation
the opinion which people generally have about something or someone

anarchic
without rules, order, or control

pick
(here) choose

the pictures
an old-fashioned way to say ‘the cinema’

pan
a post for cooking things in

caterer
a person or company that makes food for groups of people

conventional
normal, ordinary, or traditional

neat
tidy and well organised