Posted on 03/17/2014 7:33:28 AM PDT by reaganaut1
MEDFORD, Mass. — 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.”
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.
The gap year program starting this fall at Tufts will pay for housing, airfare and even visa fees, which can often add up to $30,000 or more.
Although gap years are more popular in Europe, they have started to gain traction in the United States. About 40,000 Americans participated in gap year programs in 2013, an increase of nearly 20 percent since 2006, according to data gathered by a nonprofit called the American Gap Year Association.
In 2009, Princeton University began offering applicants gap-year aid based on need. Nearly 100 students have participated, volunteering in Brazil, China, India, Peru and Senegal.
The University of North Carolina offers $7,500 to gap year applicants, while students at Wisconsin’s St. Norbert College can receive financial aid based on need, although airfare isn’t covered.
Lydia Collins, a 19-year-old Tufts freshman from Evanston, Ill., said she took a gap year because she wanted to see what was outside of the classroom before committing to four more years of school.
(Excerpt) Read more at journalnow.com ...
If you want to take a year off before college, fine. Get a job!
Of course by "colleges", the mean "taxpayers".
Your tuition dollars at work. Isn’t part of the purpose of taking time between high school and college to “find yourself” is to WORK a little to gain some maturity and perspective on what you want to do with your life before you go???? I guess that’s not the case anymore. In today’s society, “work” doesn’t have much to do with what people do with their lives.
They used to have gap years, it was called ‘joining the military.’
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
I was at some Tufts discussions to incoming students a few years back, and the overlying theme to this FR ear was globullization. Typically, across colleges/univ across the US, a semester of the Junior year has been for travel (with the study programs that really have no counterpart outside the US the exception, where the 4-y student does no semesters abroad).
Perhaps that is not enough globullizing the student, and they prefer to start earlier... pre-Freshman. That way, they don’t waste Freshman/Sophomore before they are properly glowbullized.
Cutting colleges off the taxpayer nipple could go a long way toward fixing them.
I think every kid should work at a dead end job for a year between high school and college. If more kids did, a lot of the leftist nonsense colleges peddle wouldn’t stick.
colleges are ingenious in finding ways to keep tuition/expenses sky high.
it is time to put a cap on the federal student loan program.
I had a “gap 5 years” where I learned I sure as hell didn’t want to keep mopping floors and waiting for someone in the factory to die so a job opens up for a living
This seems excessive.
I will admit, the biggest regret I have from college is not taking a semester at sea or abroad program.
It’s very hard to do that once you are in the working world. Now I have to hope I can live to see retirement to do it then.
But, the college paying for a full YEAR is too much.
Ultimately, that is on the taxpayers at many of these schools.
Amen, bro.
No kidding.
Tufts must be nuts.
“Of course by “colleges”, the mean “taxpayers”
well tufts is private, but we do end up paying one way or another.
I thought “gap years” was when you decided NOT to go to college and realized you were going to be working at the mall and living with 4 friends - then you returned to school.
Tufts sits near the Leftist Bastion known as Boston. It will continue to do its job of resupplying more pseudo-intellectual Leftists to the Boston Area. An education at Tufts (probably now approaching $60K per year) was a total waste of money even before this “gap year” plan. The other 4 years at Tufts are gap years, too.
Correct. Through "government" funded "financial aid".
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