Taking a year off between high school and college has
increasingly gained acceptance as a valuable way for young
adults to travel, work or experience the real world before
continuing on as full-time students. And the prospect of a
"gap year" might seem even more attractive to high
schoolers right now, when college application deadlines are
right around the corner. But a new study from Johns Hopkins
shows that delaying one's freshman year may have
consequences most people don't consider.
Students who delay their college enrollment by more
than one year are 64 percent less likely to complete their
bachelor's degree, even eight years later, than students
who head to college right after high school graduation.
Delayers are also more likely than on-time enrollees to
attend less-than-four-year institutions and to get married
or to have kids before entering college. The findings were
published in the Sept. 9 edition of the journal Social
Forces.
"What was surprising was that even socioeconomically
advantaged, high-performing kids, even those who started at
four-year schools, will be at a disadvantage in terms of
completing their degree if they delay," said Stefanie
DeLuca, study co-author and assistant professor of
sociology. The
study, done with then graduate student Robert Bozick, who
earned his doctorate in 2005, drew from the National
Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, a national survey of
24,599 eighth-graders that was followed up in 1990, 1992,
1994 and 2000, when the students were eight years out of
high school.
The study reports that 16 percent of the class of 1992
postponed enrollment by seven months or more after
completing high school. Delayers tended to be from
less-advantaged backgrounds, were generally low-performing
in school, had kids or had gotten married before college
and had started at a two-year college.
DeLuca, who studies education trends, became
interested in the topic of students delaying college when
she started noticing that high school students were
increasingly bombarded with information about all kinds of
college options such as distance learning and evening and
weekend colleges. "The messages of all of these programs
seemed to be, You can go back to college at any time and
there's no penalty for putting it off," she said.
DeLuca knows from past research, however, that "most
irregular timing patterns don't bode well for long-term
educational attainment." Everything from losing connection
with one's high school advisers, to family and work
commitments to simply being older than the rest of one's
college class complicates delayers' re-entry into full-time
schooling.
GO TO