At a time when the cost of a college education is colossal, and many question what purpose it serves in the first place, an increasing number of young people are taking time off, midstream, from traditional four-year programs. Some use the hiatus to earn money; others see it as a chance to take a breather and reassess goals.
According to a 1993 report from the U.S. Department of Education, the percentage of students graduating in four years or less has been declining steadily. In 1977 it was 45.4 percent, while in 1990 it was 31.1 percent.
“It’s almost become fashionable to take a year off,” says Naomi Lynn, chancellor of the University of Illinois. “When we were in school, my gosh–your children take off a year, they probably won’t graduate!”
A new book by Colin Hall and Ron Lieber, “Taking Time Off” (Noonday Press), features 33 first-person accounts from people who have taken an extended break before or during college.
One young woman was a deckhand in Alaska; another student served as an au pair in Austria; another hiked the Appalachian Trail with his dog. A common thread seems to be that all planned their time off meticulously.
“I think these days taking time off is more strategic,” says Hall, 25, adding that he doesn’t see the trend as anti-authoritarian.
“We call it structured risk taking. We’re not encouraging anyone to stay at home for a year to watch soaps.”
Reasons for taking time off vary, says Lieber, 24. For many students, it’s a question of financial need. For others, it’s a matter of exploring a passion they couldn’t pursue in high school. Others see a year off as an opportunity for a break that may never come again. And some just feel “burned out” after 13 or more years in the classroom.
“It can be a transforming experience, and it’s not just a rich kids’ phenomenon,” Hall says.
He speaks from experience. He “deferred” his start at Amherst College in Amherst, Mass., for two years and spent a year selling hot dogs and working in construction to finance an 8-month adventure in Africa, where he backpacked in Kenya, Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Zanzibar.
He enrolled in a local school to learn Swahili, lived inexpensively in youth hostels and eventually lived with a professor’s family in Zanzibar.
“It’s amazing how many adults say, `Taking time off–I’d love to do that but I’ve got a job and a mortgage.’ For me it was `seize the opportunity,’ ” Hall says.
“I think (travel) gives you a real appreciation for the diversity of people in this world. It gives you an understanding that not everybody lives in a country like the U.S.”
He eventually arrived at Amherst focused and ready to immerse himself in academia. He got straight A’s and, unlike many freshmen, felt undistracted by the party scene.
His time off also seems to have impressed employers. “Everyone said, `You traveled to Africa on a shoestring budget when you were 18? How did you do it?’ They thought it showed maturity and resourcefulness,” says Hall, now a financial analyst at Morgan Stanley in New York.
It’s apparent to many that college is simply too expensive to serve as a place for young people to find themselves these days.
Priscilla Vazquez, 27, a senior at the University of Washington, was employed as a secretary for three years before starting college, and has taken three more years off to earn money toward education expenses, working on an archeological project in North Dakota and traveling to Mexico and Canada, among other places.
“I hear a lot of students say, `I just want to get out of here,’ ” Vazquez says. “I was able to go back more mature, my grades were better, I was more focused. Education to me was so wonderful because I had to work for it.”
Like Hall’s, Vazquez’s diverse resume impresses employers.
“I’ve gotten compliments because I have a lot of variety, and it shows I’m adaptable to almost any situation,” Vazquez says. She will graduate next spring.
Schools see the need
Robert Shaw, a dean at Brown University in Providence, R.I., says he sees time away as part of the liberal studies education. At that school, about 15 percent of the members of each class take time off, and that number doesn’t include participants in study-abroad programs.
Every year there are also about a dozen high school seniors who defer entrance to Brown until January, he says. There is even a workshop for parents, “Taking Time Away From Brown,” that is well attended.
Academic study-abroad programs don’t serve the same purpose as a year or more off, says Lieber, a reporter at Fortune magazine.
“The problem with study-abroad programs is that they tie you down to a particular school or a particular place for a period of time.”
They are often more costly than planning your own trip, Hall adds.
Some of the young people cited in “Taking Time Off” camped out, lived in youth hostels, or participated in programs that give volunteers room and board, such as Habitat For Humanity and City Year.
At the University of Chicago, 100 to 200 students take time off during any given year, says Katie Nash, dean of students, and the number is steadily rising.
“Some say they need a break from school. They say, `I’ve been in school since I was 3 and I want to try something else,’ ” she says. “It can be working at a not very brainy job and they have time to read novels and take time to think about their futures.”
Nash encourages students to take time off if they’re confused about their educational goals or don’t seem to know why they’re in college.
“I think it’s more acceptable to do now. Twenty years ago it was called dropping out,” says Susan Art, an assistant dean at the U. of C.
The practice may be more accepted than it was 20 years ago, but many young people still sense resistance from parents and society. Cory Mason, one of the students in the book, had a hard time talking his parents into letting him take time off.
But he said he was exhausted after high school and knew he would fail if he immediately entered the University of Wisconsin at Madison as a lot of his friends were doing.
“It was a struggle to break away from expectations. My parents were a bit shocked,” says Mason, now a senior at Madison. “They thought this is Cory rebelling and trying to be different.”
He ended up spending a year working for Habitat for Humanity in Savannah, Ga., and says he appreciated college all the more when he returned.
“We describe it as the straight-to-college treadmill,” Lieber says. “Got to do well and get into college, gotta do well and get into grad school, gotta do well and get a job.”
A pause that refreshes
For Jody Kirchgessner, 22, the breaking point came during an economics class when she was a sophomore at Illinois Central College. She watched her classmates frantically scribbling notes and she realized she was doing the same and didn’t know why.
For much of her life she had gotten up early, taken care of siblings, taken a full course load, driven an hour to school and crammed in a job before and after classes.
Education began to feel more like a chore than something she wanted for herself. “I think my parents knew where I was going with this, that I had reached a point where I couldn’t do any more than what I was doing,” Kirchgessner says.
She contacted Interim, a Boston-based consulting firm that helps young people plan their time off.
From October ’94 to June ’95 she worked at a bed-and-breakfast chateau in France, as a volunteer teacher in Kenya and as a tree-planter in Australia. She laughs at the notion that she had rich parents to back her up.
“Money was a big problem for me; it was tough, it was tight,” she says. “The great thing in France was that I was an actual paid worker. I had income.”
She came back refreshed, changed her major from engineering to cultural anthropology, and will be a junior at Beloit College in Wisconsin this fall.
“It ties in with my whole philosophy that there has to be a better balance between the mechanical society we live in and a more open and spiritual and connected kind of existence,” Kirchgessner says.
Lieber did not take time off between high school and college and now thinks he should have.
“It was a big mistake,” he says. “It didn’t occur to me to do it because I was really excited to go to college.” His grades were respectable, if not stellar, and he changed majors countless times. Now he thinks he just may have been too young for the experience.
“College for me was a process of finding who I was,” he says. Looking back, though, he notes that $25,000 a year was an expensive way to do that.
This fall Lieber will finally take time off, using vacation time to travel to 30 to 35 cities and college towns. On Sept. 9 he’ll be at Northwestern and the University of Chicago with a sign reading “Do You Really Want To Be Here?” and talking about–what else?–taking time off.
