Gap year

A gap year (also known as "year out", "year off", "deferred year", "bridging year", "overseas experience", "time off" and "time out") is a term that refers to a prolonged period (often, but not always, a year) between a life stage. The most popular gap years are taken pre or during matriculation in a university or college, between college and graduate school and a profession, during a career change, pre or post marriage or having a first child and pre or post retirement. It is generally a practice undertaken by those from developed countries.

History

1960s: Where it all began

The origination of the 'Gap Year' concept came in the decade following the Second World War when youth travel and cultural exchange was discussed amongst Governments as a useful tool to create more of a global understanding to prevent future global wars. However, the first 'Gap Years' actually started in the UK in the 1960s when the baby-boomer generation in the midst of the 'Swinging sixties' headed off to India on the infamous Hippie trails, inventing the 'independent travel market'. And in 1967 Nicholas Maclean-Bristol set up Project Trust, an Educational Trust, and sent his first three students to Addis Ababa, inventing the Gap Year Volunteer Placements market. These have been the two key elements to the gap year market ever since - 'independent travel' and 'volunteer placements' [also known more recently as 'Voluntourism']. Work Travel (or 'Work & Travel') appeared as a third key element with the introduction of student work visas (or 'Working holiday visas') in the 1980s.

1970s: the pioneers and the growth

The demand for what was essentially new 'Independent Travel' continued through into the 1970s and resulted in the pioneers of the independent travel market establishing businesses to satisfy this demand. Australian Graham 'Screw' Turner based in London in 1973 loaded a double decker bus with the first paying customers and drove them to Kathmandu. They arrived 3 weeks late. Top Deck Travel, the company he founded, still exists today. In the same year a young Brit by the name of Tony Wheeler, headed off on an overland trip across Asia. His need for basic travel information inspired the book 'Across Asia on the Cheap' and was the first title under his Lonely Planet brand, which became the world's largest travel guide publisher. With a tour company and self help travel advice, the independent travel market was born. In 1979, another Australian Dick Porter, founded STA Travel to bring in the final piece of the puzzle. A high street travel agent for students and 'youth' (those under 26), with which he was able to develop global youth travel as he opened student travel agents around the world. Initially 'Student Travel Australia' it rebranded to the 'Student Travel Association'. Nowadays it is simply 'STA Travel'.

Whilst the first uses of the actual term 'gap year' are hard to find, it was certainly helped along with the launch in 1973 of GAP Activity Projects, now known as Lattitude Global Volunteers, a UK organisation facilitating volunteer placements for the 'Gap Year' in between school and university. Continuing on from where Nicholas Maclean-Bristol had forged the way 10 years earlier with Project Trust, GAP Activity Projects brought the gap year to the schools. A year later in 1978, The Prince of Wales with Colonel John Blashford-Snell formed the basis of what we know today as Raleigh International, launching Operation Drake, the first ever Gap Year Expedition - a round the world voyage following Sir Francis Drake's epic route. In 1984 Operation Raleigh was formed, renamed Raleigh International in 1992, by which time gap years were becoming more popular as a pre-university option to the wealthy few in private schools around the UK.

1980s: steady growth

In the UK in the 1980s the baby boomers were settling into family life with their young children and so travelling less and the next generation were influenced by the obsession for money, careers and wealth generation. The housing market crash meant less funds available for parents to fund youth travel. Steady UK and global growth continued as STA Travel opened up branches around the world. Other businesses followed suit (Usit Campus / Usit World), round the world tickets were developed for this new breed of young gap year traveller and the scene was set for the explosion of the 1990s.

1990s: the boom

A combination of the baby boomer's children reaching 18 (whose parents encouraged world travel as they did in their youth), the UK coming out of recession and new, exciting, colouful media channels to bring gap year products to market resulted in an explosion of activity in the UK as Gap Year Travel and Gap Year Volunteering took off pre, during and post University. Demand grew, prices for air travel fell and the roots of it becoming a 'rite of passage' were set. In Australia the first serious waves of young Australians heading to live and work in the UK started to appear.

2000-present: online developments, global growth, natural aging

The modern Gap Year pioneers came in the form of Tom Griffiths and Peter Pedrick who brought the gap year market onto the web in 1998 with the launch of gapyear.com. The two pioneers have invented products, offerings, phrases and concepts that form the skeleton of the global ‘Gap Year’ industry seen today. Known as the 'Gap Year Guru', Tom Griffiths is recognised as a global authority on gap years and acts as a media spokesperson around the world.

July 2005 Mintel Gap Year Reports show a market valued UK outbound at £2.2bn and globally at £5bn. The fastest growing travel sector of the Millennium, predictions are that the global gap year market will grow to around £11bn by 2010. The market demographic is split into those aged 18-24 (pre, during and post university), 25-35 ('career gap', also known as 'Career Break' and 'Career Sabbatical') and 55-65 (pre and post retirement gappers). Very much an option for all in transition between life stages, the affect on the entry into higher level Education, the changing travel markets and staff retention in businesses around the world is staggering.

Gap Year growth is accelerating across all age groups in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The US is expected to witness a boom in the coming years as the small percentage of those who have passports starts to rise.

Activities

Some students spend the time traveling others spend the time working, and many combine these into an international working holiday. A popular option for gap year students, also known as "gappers", is international volunteering. In the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, a great number of the volunteers who helped in South Asia were on a gap year.

Many gap year students also earn money while overseas by working cash in hand, often in the hospitality industry. Another growing trend for gappers is to enroll in global education programs that combine language study, homestays, cultural immersion, community service, and independent study. Such experiential opportunities exist in countries from India to China and Morocco to Brazil.

Gap years by country

Australia

Australia currently has 19 reciprocal working holiday programs with countries which include: Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK, Belgium, Estonia and Taiwan Typically restrictions for the working holiday visas include being 18-30 yrs, can prove access to funds and hold a valid passport. Work restrictions also apply to ensure that the purpose of the holiday is not to further an individual's career. The Australian Defence Force also runs a Gap Year program where enlistees are only required to serve for up to a year.

The UK and Canada remain two of the most popular destinations for Australians to visit every year, with 35,061 UK and 6,517 Canadian working holiday visas issued in 2003/4.

Youthworks run a gap year option in Sydney for Christian school leavers called Year 13 Gospel Gap Year [1]. It has a continuous option for students living in Sydney, and an intensive option for regional NSW, Australia-wide and international students.

Denmark

In the recent years the government have tried to limit the number of students, who take a gap year. The need to get students sooner into the work space and a wish to preserve the unique Danish culture have meant the students are punished if the complete their education too slow limiting the possibility of taking a gap year . In 2006 it was announced that fewer students than before had taken a gap year .

The Netherlands

The most common form of gap year is work-holiday travel to another country, preferentially on another continent if the person taking it can afford the tickets. Australia and other English-speaking countries are among the most popular due to the high standard of Dutch high school courses in English, but culture/language immersion programmes in Spanish-speaking countries are increasingly popular, and are sometimes offered on all-in basis. Most will leave the Netherlands for only half the year, spending the other six months working to finance the trip.

The liberal arts college Academia Vitae offers a preacademic gap year in Deventer for young students to study liberal arts. This is not a common form of the gap year in the Netherlands.

Now growing in popularity with the launch of the first Dutch registered gap year company xtreme-gap [2]. The Dutch gap year is also referred to as a tussen jaar.

United Kingdom

British citizens are able to take advantage of the European Union as well as the reciprocal arrangements that exist and live and work in an overseas country for an extended period of time. Australia, New Zealand and Canada remain popular destinations due to the cultural similarities and Commonwealth ties due to the British Empire.

Prince Harry popularised Africa as a Gap Year destination when he volunteered in South Africa in 2004. Other opportunities available include working in ski resorts in Canada, camp roles in America and working in the Australian Outback.

There are many gap year providers in the U.K. that provide opportunities for people of all ages. Many providers are listed on directory sites such as gapyear.com and The Year Out Group.

United States of America

In the United States, the practice of taking a "gap year" or "year out" before entering college remains relatively rare. Students either enter college (half enter the post-secondary system through community colleges) or the labor force directly after high school. After college, most university undergraduates directly enter the labor force.

This trend can be partially traced to American culture, which stresses economic independence, as well as the considerably higher cost of post-secondary education in the U.S. Many American students may not be able to afford a year off.

In 2004, over 65% of 4-year college students relied on loans to finance their education, with the average debt of roughly $20,000. Among graduate students average debt totaled roughly $42,000 in 2004.

Some organizations have offered young Americans structured gap year programs. These include Dynamy, with sites in Worcester, Massachusetts and Santa Rosa, California. [3] Another American gap year option is City Year, with locations in urban centers around the U.S.. Other American companies, like Rustic Pathways and Map the Gap International, offer cultural immersion community service and travel programs around the world.

Israel

In Israel, gap-years are mostly used for travel. A 3-year army service is compulsory - after which it is customary to travel. For the majority of Israelis, the first few months after dismissal are spent working and saving money for the trip. In order to spend as little time as possible working (rather than traveling) and as much time as possible on vacation, Israelis prefer traveling to the Far East, India or Indo-China due to the low cost of living there. Some who are drafted late use the time between high-school graduation and army service to travel. Working holidays are also common practice, especially to Western countries such as the USA, Canada and Australia. Former combative infantrymen sometimes find jobs as weapons instructors or security personnel in various places around the globe, which can also be considred a sort of working holiday. In Jewish summer camps in the diaspora (particularly in the USA and UK), there is a tendency to hire Israeli staff in hope that through the interaction with them the camper's connection with Israel would strengthen. This is considered Zionist, and is often arranged via the Jewish Agency.

Destinations

China

The number of foreign students wanting to study in China[4] is rising rapidly year by year by approximately 20%.[5] According to official government figures 195,503 overseas students from 188 countries and regions came to study on the mainland in 2007 although the number is believed to be somewhere around the 300,000 region, because the government’s figures do not include students studying at private language schools. This makes China the world’s sixth-largest study abroad destination. According to reports, the Republic of Korea, Japan, the United States of America, Vietnam and Thailand were the five biggest source countries with European countries rapidly catching up.[6] Currently the Chinese government offers over 10,000 scholarships to foreign students, though this is set to rise by approximately 3000 within the next year.

More and more international students are becoming more aware of the many advantages of studying in China. Fortune Magazine’s Goeff Colvin’s article ‘You have 7 years to learn Mandarin’[7]explains how China is becoming the global economic power house sooner than expected i.e. 2015 as opposed to 2050. China has already drawn the attention of the West for its impressive growth rates and the 2008 Olympic Games have only intensified this positive attention. Chinese companies are booming, even growing to the extent that some companies are now trying to take over major multinationals and more western companies and individuals are trying to be part of this growth and success. Due to China’s fast development and its size and population number, linguist experts are predicating the number of people learning English as a second language to decline. Although English will remain a dominant language in the foreseeable future, monolingual native English speakers will find it harder to seek employment. Studying for a degree or learning the language in China will offer a unique learning experience and open many doors in the future.

Currently China has around 1000 colleges and universities and the government is working hard to improve all of them. Some universities have already gained international reputation for outstanding teaching and research facilities. Additionally China has signed agreements with almost 40 countries such as France, Great Britain, the United States of America, Russia, etc to recognize each others diplomas. Further more, many Chinese universities now offer degrees in English enabling students with no knowledge of Chinese to study here.

Another major factor that draws students to China is the considerably lower cost of living in China compared to most western countries. Major cities in China such as Beijing and Shanghai already have a strong international presence and major other cities are following. The possibilities to mix with Chinese and international people, be it for social activities or networking are large.

While back at home employers do not just look at the grades and which school you graduated from but are more and more interested in seeing international education experiences on CVs. Students gain a new perspective of the world especially if they come from western countries and know little about Asia. Being away from home in unfamiliar surroundings improves their decision-making and problem-solving skills and above all students improve their Chinese skills which will be highly regarded by any employer back at home.

See also

• Sabbatical year
• Career break
• Work-life balance

External links

• Gap Years at Curlie