Gap years are a time for high school grads to take a year off before going to college, or for college grads to take a year off before starting to work full time.
The purpose of “gap years” some argue, is to give students a chance for more maturity and be better prepared for college: Parent Attitudes Towards Gap Years – Gap Year Solutions
To a very, very great extent, a gap year is a luxury affordable to more people due to rising living quality for many. (It depends on what one does with a gap year – see below.)
Oddly, due to delays in financial aid, some are encouraging students to spend money on – travel: Should you take a gap year before college? Factors to consider (cnbc.com) You need a loan to go to college so spend money on luxuries instead of necessities? Hmmmmm.
A gap year was something that was unaffordable to most (and probably is unaffordable still to most) – as most young people needed to plow through on-the-job training or college and get employed as soon as they could. As of 2015, about 3% of students took a post high school gap year (there does not appear to be an updated estimate since then – except for one in 2020, but that was during Covid). Many students found the gap year helpful, they say: What Gap Year Statistics Tell Us About The Impact of Gap Year Programs on College Success (nols.edu) But that may also have numerous confounding variables – like the ability to afford a gap year may, in itself, lead to better outcomes in life.
Additionally, in some fields you’ve just done all your college prep in high school – AP Calculus, AP Physics, AP Chemistry – and so on – as fantastic prep for the rigor of college STEM courses. By taking a year off, your skills will go stale. Sure, you can work on picking them up later, but that gap year will set you back if you are pursing “hard” STEM subjects in college. Which suggests gap years are not for everyone.
For some, a gap year is a luxury – time spent backpacking around the world. For some others, it might instead be working as a full-time volunteer (e.g. AmeriCorps), developing real world skills. Gap years that improve skills and maturity are valuable – gap years that are fun time off, funded by the Bank of Mom and Dad – are, mostly, just a fun time off for those who can afford that path. To justify that, some now pursue “voluntourism” – which is, unfortunately, a bit of scam: Volunteer opportunities and travel – Coldstreams Travel and Global Thinking
In fact,
According to a comprehensive 2020 survey from Gap Year Association [GYA], the motivations for most members of this cohort boiled down to three things: to get life experience; to develop themselves; and to travel in order to be able to experience other cultures and varying perspectives. Eighty-one percent of the people surveyed said it was because of wanting to gain life experiences and to grow personally, while 70% revealed the motivation for a gap year was more about traveling and seeing and experiencing other cultures.
Gap Year Statistics: United States | Wonder (askwonder.com)
Traveling and experiencing other cultures is valuable and rewarding – but that furthers my point that gap years are primarily a luxury for the well-to-do as traveling is not free.
Some argue the above objections to gap years are wrong: Here’s What All This Criticism of the “gap Year” Says About Our American Perspective (matadornetwork.com)
They’re upset because I took a different path, a path that to them, sounds like “not hard enough” work.
We are supposed to be the nation of innovation and newness and “do-it-yourself-ness” but we have become terrified of lives that might look too lazy. Of course, we still love breaking the mold in some ways — our tech culture proves that. But it took a lot of people succeeding in tech before anyone took that seriously. Maybe it will take a lot of people taking alternative career and education routes, and succeeding as adults, before we’re ok with that.
She’s defending the elitism that enabled those like her to take a gap year. The argument that tech requires risk-taking; therefore gap years make sense is a non-sequitur.
The author attended private George Washington University, did a study abroad in Peru, then a Masters at The London School of Economics. Her perspective is from a place disconnected from many young people in America. She received scholarships from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (cool guy!) for all of the above. If you are like her, then yes, a gap year can make sense. But she misses her own privilege – and implies those who did not take her path are substandard people who afraid to take risks.
Is it necessary for those privileged enough to take gap years, to denigrate everyone else (and we mean, literally, the 97% who couldn’t take a gap year)? It comes across as the elite looking down upon the unwashed masses.
I graduated from college coincident with the largest new young cohort of college grads in history due to being born in the peak year of the baby boom – competition for jobs was fierce – twice as high as it would be just 13 years later.
For landing in the 97%, I’m a substandard person on gap years!
Today, I wish incredibly badly I could have had a senior year in high school, had a high school graduation, and had the opportunity to travel when younger (I did not visit Europe for the first time until age 63), and wish terribly that I had been treated for TBI before age 58 (and 5 additional concussions). But I did not have that option. Does that make me a substandard bad person? That is how Mary Ellen Dingley’s writing comes across – and reads like an out of touch elitist. Yet these are the people who set the national dialog and expectations.
Gap years are like Tiny Homes (see previous post) – the media discovered them and is hyping them, making it seem like gap years are the big new thing, that everyone is doing. For many, gap years are an upper-class luxury prerogative. Gap years are done because more people today can afford them – but that goes against the usual media meme that everything is awful.
