While I normally cast a skeptical eye on fashionable trends in American education, count me among those who fully support the “gap year” between high school and college. Already a growing phenomenon, its popularity will surely increase following the announcement that Malia Obama will delay her inaugural semester at Harvard until the fall of 2017. As the New York Times noted earlier this week, a bevy of research and anecdotal evidence suggests that gap-year students arrive on campus better prepared—academically, socially, and emotionally—than their non-gap-year classmates. University administrators have thus become some of the biggest advocates for postponing enrollment.
What they don’t seem to appreciate is that the gap-year trend represents a subtle indictment of their institutions. After all, if people believe that a gap year will accelerate students’ maturation, help them cultivate practical and/or vocational skills, make them more sophisticated, or give them (in the words of journalist Susan Greenberg) “a newfound sense of purpose and perspective,” the implication is that colleges will fall short in each of these areas. For that matter, the gap year raises important questions about why so many people are attending college in the first place.