Gap-year travel brings students back to learning

YOUNG people are using gap years to road-test well-developed study plans.

130417he Talia Smith, Josh McLarty

THE image, immortalised in classics from The Razor's Edge to the Narnia chronicles, has young people wandering down foreign roads to find themselves. But modern students are not blank pages, and they're using gap years to road-test well-developed study plans.

University of Newcastle student Joshua McLarty said his gap year in southern Africa and New Guinea had strengthened his long-held aspiration to be a doctor. "Seeing the situation of people living in those areas really made me want to work in a place like that," he told a National Centre for Vocational Education Research forum in Sydney.

"I wanted to take that gap to make sure it was really what I wanted to do. It reinforced my need, my desire to do medicine."

Talia Smith took a break from her arts degree to teach English in rural China. On her return she switched to a business degree. But she didn't lose her passion for languages. "I could see myself graduating from an arts degree with a major in languages, but I didn't know how that would give me direction in my career," she said.

"China reaffirmed that I love other cultures and languages. It started me thinking about how I could combine this passion with something I could actually use in the workforce. I just came across business."

The gap year is an established rite of passage for many young Australians but, until recently, the phenomenon was little understood. Concerns were raised that many would-be students could lose the study bug after being lured into gap-year work stints, which provided eligibility for Youth Allowance.

But an NCVER report last year found the opposite was also the case: many students who had never intended further study turned to university after stints of work or travel.

The report concluded that a post-school break from study was probably likelier to encourage people into further education than turn them off the idea.

First-year psychology student Rachel Clark said she had never considered abandoning study plans during extended travels last year in Europe and Morocco. "I definitely caught the travel bug, but I wanted to embrace a little bit of routine again. Europe and other continents are still going to be there in a year's time. I can always save up and go again."

Ms Smith said many students were taking gap years after a year or two of university, rather than straight out of school.

"Most of my friends have deferred their courses and gone back when they finished their gap year," she said. "It seems to just reaffirm what they originally wanted to study."

Mr McLarty said the year after school was particularly significant. "You're free from that structure of school. You're forced to think what you really want to do and the pressures of school aren't influencing and pushing you."

The forum heard that the gap year association with income support lingered in regional areas, where would-be students could still qualify for the full "independent" stream of Youth Allowance by working for as little as five or six months. Brad McElroy, careers adviser at Monaro High School in the southern NSW town of Cooma, said gap years were a "no-brainer" for his students.

"There's no university in town and they must take a gap year to make it affordable," he said. "It's very cut and dried."

Mr McElroy said that if the eligibility link with gap years were removed, their popularity would diminish.