Gapping It - The untold story
When we started the research for our webinar about Gapping It (aka the gap year, but hey, it doesn’t need to be a year!) we ended up with one big question:
Are we sending our kids off to uni before they are actually ready?
There are a few things going on that led us to this question:
School leavers feel tremendous pressure from all directions to head straight on to study/training after secondary school
We have eye-watering drop-out/course-switch rates in NZ tertiary institutions according to a study by the NZ Tertiary Education Commission. one-third don’t complete their course or switch courses, and 1 in 5 drop out of their first year altogether.
International research and powerful anecdotal evidence shows that there are huge personal growth and longer-term benefits for young people who take a break from their studies, and
No one seems to be talking about this!
It is a Kiwi norm to wrap up high school and head off to university, with around 50% of our school leavers doing just that. But are they all really ready to go? Students we spoke to say there is huge social pressure to get on the tertiary bandwagon, coming from schools, families and peer groups.
This pressure can be illustrated by a real example of a secondary school graduation ceremony where each student’s intended tertiary institution and course of study was read out to polite applause from the audience. Tittering for the one student opting for a gap year speaks volumes about the prevailing attitudes.
One of the gappers we spoke to had exactly that experience of being swept off to uni with her peer group. Anna, a high-achieving secondary school student, launched straight into first year med school because she thought it was what she ‘should do’, only to find herself feeling burnt out, unmotivated and uninspired by her studies. When COVID came along, sending her to on-line classes, it forced her to re-think. She decided to take a year off to collect herself, rest up, spend time with family and re-consider her priorities. She is now back at university studying psychology and absolutely loves it.
Liz Barry, a tertiary career counselling expert, says the experience of finding yourself feeling ‘lost and out of place’ at university can be bruising for a young person, bringing a sense of failure about ‘not getting it right’ - not to mention having to shoulder the financial costs of that decision, even with the first year-free scheme.
Of course the actual reasons behind a student’s decision to drop out are many and varied, (and not published), but we do know from the experience of tertiary careers experts like Liz that lack of ‘readiness’ is a big factor.
Career decision making requires knowledge of yourself and your options
Findings cited in Gap Year research from Canada show that career decision making is one of the most stressful processes faced by young adults - something most of us know, having been there ourselves! Developing career planning confidence and clarity requires a substantial amount of self-knowledge as well as knowledge about available career options. Many young people lack this breadth of knowledge and self understanding at the end of secondary school, and this lack contributes to high rates of personal, academic problems in early university life.This is something that we are passionate about helping to address at amp’d careers.
And yet there remains a strong expectation on our school leavers to have a career plan. But can they even make a plan at 18?
Nathan Wallis, a well known neuroscience educator and brain development researcher, would say No! Many teens are simply ill-equipped to make those kinds of decisions at that age.
And much of it has to do with the development of the frontal cortex - the part of the brain that makes rational, measured, future-focused life decisions. Career and study decisions need an operational frontal cortex!
When they finally get into the driver's seat using their adult brain, they do so at vastly differing ages, based heavily on gender and birth order. Recent brain development research shows females achieve adult brain maturity, typically between 18-24 yrs and males between 22 - 32 years! Overlay birth order, where first born children usually show faster brain development and we get young people maturing into their adult brain over a normal span of 14 years!
And yet here in NZ, we almost uniformly expect our kids to trot off to uni aged 19 - very much at the early end of the adult brain development spectrum.
There is no doubt, heading off to university straight from school is right for some, but there are other options out there.
In other parts of the world gapping it is the norm
A number of the ivy league universities in the US, (Harvard being one of them), actively encourage students to take a study break before commencing their first year. In Europe, gap years are commonplace with over 25% of students taking a gap before starting tertiary study, and at the higher end, more than half of students from Norway and Denmark take the break.
So why don’t more Kiwi teens gap it? And of those who do, what is their experience? Sadly there is almost no NZ data about the Kiwi ‘gapping it’ experience, so we set out to find out for ourselves.
We invited gappers and a tertiary education careers expert to discuss their insights at our Gapping It webinar, and we found the level of alignment was quite astonishing.
We covered the big questions that we know parents and teens have:
Who would benefit from gapping it?
What really are the benefits, and how can parents & teens make sure a gap delivers?
Do gappers lose momentum and ultimately not bother with study after their gap?
Has COVID killed the Gap Year?
Check out the webinar Should my teen Gap It? on youtube, or follow this page for our next blog to find out what our panel had to say.
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