LONDON, 5 October 2003 — Prince Harry is not alone.
This year 30,000 students, maybe more, are taking a break from their studies to embark on what’s become a British institution — the gap year.
Once a minority pursuit for the well-off and the odd rebel, the gap year has become a must-take opportunity to expand horizons, learn about other cultures, maybe partake in volunteer work, and certainly have fun.
“It’s seen as a rite of passage,” said Tom Griffiths, founder of Gapyear.com, an Internet site where “gappers” can get ideas and exchange experiences. “It’s bred into our society.”
Prince Harry, the younger son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, is this year’s best known gapper.
Fresh out of Eton, and bound for the elite Sandhurst military academy, he arrived in Australia last month to spend three months as a jackeroo, or cowboy, at the remote Tooloombilla cattle station in Queensland.
Press photographers have so harassed the dashing 19-year-old that he has reportedly been forced to stay indoors. (His elder brother Prince William went to Chile and Kenya in 2001 before starting at Saint Andrew’s University in Scotland.)
Gapyear.com reckons that up to 50,000 British teenagers like Harry have put off university this year.
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service thinks the number is smaller. Its figures show that 29,139 students opted to defer their 2002 places to this year.
But there’s no denying the popularity of gap year. “There’s a view held by a lot of people that gap years are just about volunteering, but they are just not what this generation is about,” Griffiths told AFP.
“This is the Playstation generation,” he said. “They want to have fun. This can involve volunteering — but the bottom line is, it’s about themselves.”
The gap year took shape in the 1960s, as British hippies flocked to India and other points east. Its popularity waned in the 1970s and 1980s, only to enjoy a revival in the 1990s.
The current explosion, Griffiths said, is due in part to the influence of the first baby-boomer gappers whose children now are coming of age.
Air travel is cheaper, too. A round-the-world air ticket with five stops from a discount agent in London can cost as little as £700 ($1,170).
Universities and potential employers who used to frown upon students who didn’t study non-stop now tend to see a gap year as a positive part of a young job-seeker’s resume. “Our society can only benefit from travel which promotes character, confidence and decision-making skills,” said Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who has a son at Oxford University.
Griffith agreed: “Young people are telling us they don’t know what to do in life. They need to take time off, to gain maturity. It will help them get more out of university.”
A dissenting view emerged in September when a researcher at the University of Newcastle, in the northwest of England, argued that gap years were not as beneficial as their image might suggest.
“The way the gap year is structured is all around keeping things simple, having fun,” said Kate Simpson, a doctoral candidate at the Royal Geographical Society in London.
“There is no encouragement for participants to actually think about what they are doing,” particularly in developing countries, she said.
“We need to change the agenda so that it is more managed as an educational experience — rather than just a tourist experience.”
In some reported cases, gappers have taken part in packaged trips — sometimes tailor-made to please parents and prospective employers — which fail to address the environmental impact on local communities.
Gappers have even found themselves in developing countries delivering babies and teaching school with no prior training — things they’d be banned by law from doing in Britain.
Many teenagers are also ill-equipped to cope with the rigors of international travel — and tales of gap years gone wrong regularly hit the headlines.
In April 2002, Caroline Stuttle, 19, from York in the north of England, was robbed and murdered in Queensland, Australia, where she’d gone to pick tomatoes before starting university.
Last month, Matthew Scott, also 19, escaped kidnap by rebels in Colombia who are still holding seven other foreigners. He got back home to south London in time to start his engineering classes at Oxford.
While such misadventures and tragedies are rare, Charlie McGrath, a former British army officer who runs training courses for would-be gappers, finds that most students are unaware of potential dangers.
“They haven’t appreciated the range of threats — be it other backpackers, poor transport, corrupt officials, or food and water,” he said. “The worst prepared are the 18-year-old boys.”
