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| Delaying College for a Year Could Have Benefits | | By admin |
| Friday, March 13, 2009 12:00:00 |
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Delaying College for a Year Could Have Benefits
JONATHAN D. GLATER
Published: March 13, 2009
Last month, President Obama proposed what some experts called the most sweeping changes in federal college aid programs in decades. But even if Congress approves the new and expanded programs, they will not take effect until July 2010.
So here is a heretical idea for this year’s high school seniors: Take a year off and go out and do something else. Then, when it is available, see if you can take advantage of that aid money — more fixed-rate student loans and bigger grants to the poorest students.
The aid increases are not huge, just a few hundred dollars a year in grants and a few thousand dollars more in loans. So this is not entirely about the money. In fact, it is not really about the money at all but about the opportunity.
Students who have already applied for admission, who now may be waiting to hear where they got in, can simply ask to defer for a year, something college officials say they usually accommodate. By waiting, those with younger siblings may save their families money because more financial aid is available when more than one child in a family is in college at the same time.
Parents are probably worrying that their jobs are more precarious than ever and that home equity loans and other forms of credit are harder and more costly to obtain. The prospect of a bill for tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, hardly attractive in the best of times, looks particularly painful now.
Even careful, far-sighted parents who put aside money for years may be chagrined at what the financial markets have done to their 529 or other college savings plans. If high school graduates can work for a year, maybe they can help save for some of their educational expenses next year. At the least, they can put off going into serious debt.
Guidance counselors and admissions officers say that the vast majority of high school students who want to go to college do not want to put it off.
“I haven’t had many students in my career do that, simply because it’s not part of the norm,” said Robert E. Bardwell, director of guidance and a counselor at Monson High School in Monson, Mass. “Many of them, especially the higher achieving students, are eager to get into college so that they can get done sooner.”
Students who want to be doctors or pursue some other graduate or professional program also want to get started more quickly, Mr. Bardwell said. Then, they can begin working sooner, and make money to buy the toys they have been yearning for and, of course, to pay off any student debts.
“They always want to get to that next level of life because there’s some sort of reward,” Mr. Bardwell said, adding that he had stopped inviting some programs aimed at the year after high school — the “gap year” — to make presentations at his school because there had been so little interest.
Taking a year off is a leap of faith. It is a bet that graduating from college five or six years from now will result in at least as good an outcome as graduating in four or five. It is an optimistic choice and perhaps, in these dark times, I am overly optimistic.
So here’s the darker view.
“There’s a real possibility things could be worse,” warned Seth Allen, dean of admission and financial aid at Grinnell College in Iowa. “What if the markets have actually dropped further, and the kind of economic news coming out suggests that unemployment will continue to rise and endowments for the foreseeable futures will remain flat?”
That may mean colleges that are increasing financial aid to lure students may not be able to do so next year. This year, colleges that lack hefty endowments have made aid a priority and are cutting elsewhere because they need to fill seats in their classrooms, Mr. Allen said.
The tight economy also means there is no guarantee that high school students graduating this spring will find jobs to keep them occupied next year. And the aid in President Obama’s proposed budget is, well, proposed. It may not materialize.
I do not advocate taking a year off for the sake of taking a year off. Anyone who wants to take the plunge should come up with a plan. There is an economic crisis in this country, and there are low-pay, high-reward projects out there for those willing to try them. Consider AmeriCorps and Habitat for Humanity, which have already seen a spike in applications, though not because of the economy, said Sandy Scott, a spokesman for the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that oversees the programs.
“Through research and just knowing who applies, we think that the primary motivation of people joining AmeriCorps is they want to make a difference,” Mr. Scott said. Because the wages are so low, around $11,000 a year, he said, “We don’t think the economy has a huge impact.”
Every admissions officer I spoke to about taking a “gap year” said that students who had made that choice arrived on campus wiser and more mature and had a sense of perspective their younger classmates lacked.
But college admissions officials said it could be difficult to complete an application in the middle of a year off. So high school students planning to go that route should probably get recommendations from teachers before graduation and keep them (or have the teachers keep them).
I suspect that some students who do not defer offers of admission may find themselves interested in applying to different colleges in that year after high school. They will have at least a few months of new experiences when they go through the process a second time.
College admissions officials say taking two years off, and planning to apply in the second year with an essay on experiences accumulated in the meantime, looks riskier to colleges, especially if the time does not look intentional and well planned.
“When someone’s been away for two years, you wonder about their transition back to a rigorous academic program,” said Michael Behnke, dean of enrollment at the University of Chicago. “That might not be the best idea.”
But for students who get into college this spring, it is hard to see a downside to taking a year off. Gaining valuable life experience is not exactly dilly-dallying. And if ever there was a time that youthful enthusiasm, energy and creativity might be needed out in the real world, this could be it.
Source: The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/business/14year.html?ref=education
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