Filling in the Gap

College graduation should never interfere with college drinking.

Graduating high school in June of 1964, I started college two months later. It was the thing to do. In fact, I had no options since back then there was no such thing as a "gap year." Had there been, I would have jumped at the chance to work as a nanny in Provence, or travel for a year right here at home. Visit several big cities, get a job as a waitress or sweeping the floors in a hair salon. You know, get a sense of the world. Meet people from other cultures, teach kids art, read books of my own choosing. Who knows where I'd be today?

Instead I went directly to New York University in lower Manhattan. I read books, some of which I hated and forgot right after the final. Even though I majored in fine art, I was required to take economics and history and chemistry. (Ha! Don't ask me anything about that stuff -- I still can't fill in all the states correctly on a map of the US.) Since this was in the late sixties I missed out on the whole binge-drinking, binge-TV-watching, coed dorms, "friends with benefits" thing. Basically I went to class, one of which required me to read everything Shakespeare ever wrote. (I definitely could have used some binge-drinking to get through that one.)

The painful truth is that today, attending college is all about jobs. It's aimed at making new worker bees to fuel the economy, pay the taxes and keep the hive humming. The official word from our Queen Bee, a position currently filled by President Obama, is that you need it to survive: “Higher education is not a luxury. Earning a post-secondary degree or credential is a prerequisite for 21st century jobs, and one that everyone should be able to afford. It serves as the gateway to better options and more opportunity." Reality check: Today’s crop of new B.A.s are staring at roughly 8.5% unemployment and 16.8% underemployment. Close to half of those who find work won’t even find a job that requires their degree.

To hide this dirty laundry, education experts come up with plenty of reasons to take out loans and and owe huge sums of money for the housing, food, books and travel to and from home that college students require. They say students have the opportunity to read books and listen to the lectures of top experts in their fields. Hey, guess what: Books are available everywhere, and so are TED talks on the Internet. In fact, the entire Internet is an education, and reading Wikipedia for several hours each day is totally free.

They say that the stimulating environment on campus encourages students to think, ask questions and explore new ideas. Not so anymore, since in these days of political correctness, college presidents everywhere are simply banning ideas that are considered to be too radical or different, or which may trigger uncomfortable feelings among the pampered student body. 

They say a college education provides the opportunity to gain valuable resources you'll need later on. "The more connections which are collected during your college career, the more options you will have when you begin your job search," says one expert I never heard of and neither have you. But today, unemployed college graduates living with their parents and playing video games while they look for jobs that don't exist to pay off their enormous student loans would dispute that claim.

Clearly the "gap year" is the way to go. Or better year, gap years... maybe two or three. After all, college will always be there, and the older you are when you enroll, the more you'll get out of the experience. If you're interested in this idea and need more encouragement to buck the establishment, read Vagabonding by Rolf Potts and Gap Year: How Delaying College Changes People in Ways the World Needs by Joseph O'Shea.