The hardest thing about taking a gap year is usually deciding where to go and what to do. But whether it’s counting turtles on the beach in Costa Rica or rebuilding tsunami-hit towns in Sri Lanka, planning your finances properly before donning a rucksack should help you stay away for longer.
The average would-be student spends around £3,000 during a year off before university, according to website www.gap-year.com. This takes into account the cost of a round-the-world air ticket at about £1,000 and will vary greatly because daily living costs will depend on the location and itinerary. But even travellers who want to do volunteer work can end up out of pocket – some organised projects will ask you to raise as much as £3,000 towards their costs.
“One of the most common reasons that people have to cut their gap year travels short is that they have run out of money,” says Tom Griffiths, founder of www.gapyear.com. “A lack of money is also one of the reasons that a lot of people say they can’t take a gap year. But there are a lot of ways to raise the money in just a few months before you take the trip.”
He says gap years became common in the 1980s and 90s when students followed in the footsteps of the 1960s hippie trail to Kathmandu. But they have evolved as gap year travellers have started to tour the world, getting involved in community projects and conservation. Today the gap year is a major industry, with hundreds of charities and tour companies competing for business.
To raise funds, Griffiths suggests getting in touch with charities in your area such as the Rotary Club, which donate money to locals. Nationally you could contact the Peter Kirk Memorial fund which every year gives away £1,000 each to 10 separate people.
“This money clearly isn’t given away so you can swan off around the world and have a holiday at other people’s expense however,” says Griffiths. “It is usually available from local funds and charities to enable young people to either get involved with projects that will improve the lives of others or the community they live in, or help them to develop as a person through an activity that will benefit them.”
Last year universities predicted a slowdown in the number of students opting for a gap year because of the spiralling costs of tertiary education costs following the rise in tuition fees from £1,000 to £3,000 a year in August. But figures from gap year service i-to-i, which matches volunteers to projects overseas, show a steady rise in the number of people taking a year out before university; the figure for 2005, for example, was 26 per cent up on the previous year.
This rise could be seen as a recognition by students that there are financial benefits of a gap year. “The additional benefit of getting a job during a gap year – as well as raising the funds for tuition and maintenance – is the work experience gained along the way. [This is] something which could prove invaluable in the rush to secure a high-paid job after finals,” says Andy Davidson, communications manager at the Institute of Employment Studies in Brighton.
He says the one thing that blue-chip companies complain about year in and year out is the paucity of job skills among today’s graduates. Leadership, people skills, problem solving ability – these are the qualities which top employers are searching for, and are ready to pay a high premium for: as much as someone with a first-class degree, according to the IES.
But the overall effect of a gap year on someone’s career will depend very much on how the individual sells himself in an interview. “If they can show that they learnt a lot from their year out then employers are more likely to take them seriously rather than a student that has just spent the last few years of their life with their heads in their books,” says Davidson.
I-to-i founder Deirdre Bounds, says “With more and more people gaining top grades at university, employers are looking for other ways to identify the best workers. In spite of top-up fees we are still seeing numbers of our gap year placements steadily growing. This can only be a good thing for employers who say that graduates who have taken a gap year are more rounded interviewees than those straight from university.” One trend many trip organisers are noticing is the growing number of people who want to spend their time on “socially responsible” projects which many are paying for by fundraising ahead of their journey.
Of course, the key thing is to plan your year well, and to decide what you want to get out of it. Neither employers, nor parents, nor individual students themselves will look back positively on a badly-organised gap year strewn with short-term jobs, aborted trips and expensive, half-completed courses.
