Tuition fee plans put paid to dreams of a gap year

news.ft.com By Jonathan Guthrie Published: January 25 2003 4:00 | Last Updated: January 25 2003 4:00

Tens of thousands of fifth-formers across the UK will come to terms this weekend with the miserable realisation that they cannot afford to take a gap year between school and university.

They had dreamt of seeing Uluru on a red, outback dawn. Or inculcating English into poncho-wearing Andean children. Some merely planned to work to finance their higher education.

But proposals to allow universities to charge tuition fees of up to £30,000 to students starting courses from autumn 2006 mean that taking a gap year could prove expensive.

The Department for Education said yesterday that it had no plans to exempt students deferring the start of university from 2005 to 2006 from higher fees.

About 80,000 undergrad-uates from a total of 330,000 accepted annually by British universities take a year out before beginning their studies. The number has grown sharply over the past 5-6 years with the advent of cheap long-haul airfares.

But a slump is expected in 2005-06 if the government does not relent on deferred entrants, as the National Union of Students is calling on it to do. "We are very concerned that numbers will drop, and recognise it is a big problem we will have to face," said Gap Activity Projects, an educational charity which places 2,000 young Britons a year with voluntary programmes in 34 countries.

Charles Clarke, the burly and bearded education minister, never had much chance of becoming a pin-up for teenagers. But he is now even more unpopular with a slew of 15- and 16-year-olds than annoying kid brothers and embarrassing dads.

"My parents have advised me not to take a gap year now," said Natasha McCarthy, sitting with fellow pupils in the wood-panelled entrance hall of King Edward VII High School For Girls in Edgbaston, Birmingham. She had planned to split her gap year between travelling and work experience with an accountancy firm.

Sara Sehdev, another pupil at the academically supercharged school, had received "an amazing offer" to work for a New Zealand TV company. "Now I won't be able to take that up," she said sadly.

But isn't a gap year just a chance to bum around the world with a backpack? Not according to Olivia Toye, another fifth-former: "We've been in an academic cocoon since we were tiny," she said. "This would have been a chance to experience real life before more education."

The group, which includes Natasha, Sara and Olivia, will "miss out on valuable personal development opportunities", said NUS president Mandy Telford, as well as having to find other ways to bolster their CVs.

Students abandoning plans for gap years will meanwhile put added pressure on places in the autumn of 2005. Experts think the number of deferrals will build up again, though to a lower level, in succeeding years.

The upside will be a temporary reduction in college bars, recounting tales of bandits in Brazil, amoebic dysentery in Azerbaijan and the time Ben fell in the sea near Brisbane.