Princeton Makes ‘Gap Year’ Official
Travel Blog • Julia Ross • 02.21.08 | 8:35 AM ET
I’ve always been a little jealous of the Brits on account of the gap year. To take an officially sanctioned pre-college year to travel, volunteer, or study language seems to me a wonderful start to adulthood. Administrators at Princeton University apparently think so, too: They’ve just announced they plan to launch a “gap year” program (they call it “bridge year”) for up to 10 percent of incoming freshman students, who will spend a year abroad performing social service work. The program is the first of its kind in the U.S., and Princeton says it will not charge tuition for the year.
A New York Times story on the announcement has drawn mixed reaction: Some commenters see it as a necessary step to prepare young Americans for a fast globalizing world, others think a gap year should focus first on volunteer service in the U.S. A supporter from Berkeley, California, notes: “The United States is full of intelligent, engaging, and thoughtful young people. The world wants to meet them.” A skeptic counters, “Is Newark a foreign country deserving of such attention? ... The ivory towers must be quite tall if they can’t see the smoldering cities that surround them.”
As the Times reported a couple years ago, U.S. high school graduates are showing greater interest in creating their own “gap years”—some combining service work in the U.S. with travel or service abroad.