<p>"Colleges are paying students to take a year off after high school to travel, volunteer or do internships so that students of all income brackets can benefit from ‘gap years.’</p>
<p>A new program at Tufts University and existing ones at a handful of other schools aim to remove the financial barriers that can keep cash-strapped students from exploring different communities and challenge their comfort zones before jumping right into college." …</p>
<p>Ridiculous. So many better uses for that money. One of the skeptical stories about this program included a link to this very funny video:
<a href=“Gap Yah - YouTube”>Gap Yah - YouTube;
<p>Very silly but every college is looking for a hook. If a student is not ready for college, take a year off…take two. Not sure why a college would want to spend money paying for a student to do that unless they were very, very concerned about future enrollment trends or want a baseline age enrolled in which case simply post the age and be done with it. There no “benefit” unless the student needs the time to mature or sow some oats or whatever. </p>
<p>wow. Here in Australia people of all socioeconomic backgrounds do take gap years - because you work the first half of the year to pay your way and then travel the second half. 70% of my graduating class is taking a year off. </p>
<p>I totally understand why Tufts would want to encourage it - they want adults, as we are technically supposed to be at 18 or 19, rather than children, as students. Tufts has a very global focus and probably wants to ensure an environment of people with open minds and perspectives shaped by more than one town or one city or even one country, a person who has had such a gap year will be at an entirely different emotional, maturity and intellectual level. They will be more tolerant, less ignorant and chauvinistic. Whether the university should go so far as to fund it - well I think it’s definitely nice for them to contribute as it will ultimately make their school a better, smarter, more open place, I also think it’s important for us the students to contribute and be earning some of our own money for the trip.</p>