Making your year out work for you

WHATEVER you feel about going to unversity, by accepting a place you are committing yourself to a debt of between £20,000 and £30,000 by the time you graduate.



University choices have become serious. The only reason for taking on such a debt is to get on to the career path of your choice and over a lifetime earn, hopefully, up to £150,000 more than you would have done without a degree.

So real answers to real questions need to be found. What do you want to do in life? What degree do you need to achieve this? What are the best courses to enable this? In the past you did not need to consider many of these questions until much later.

That is why the fastest growing gap-year market is the career gap sector, with 25-year-old to 35-year-old professionals taking time out to retrain and work out what they want to do in life. Most of them highlight the rash choices they made at the age of 18 and dream of regaining lost ground. The difference is that they did not have to fork out £20,000 for a degree.

So if you did not get the grades to study business at Nottingham but qualify to do it elsewhere, is it really the end of the world? Why not reapply for next year? A gap year involving work experience, working to earn money and some travel will look good on your application and ensure your £20,000 is going to the right place.

You may find that the firm that employs you during your gap year will keep you on during university and take you straight into its graduate scheme after your finals. While you are gaining experience and amassing funds for university you can assess whether it is right for you. If you tick its boxes, you have not only earned your keep but you have cut short a lengthy recruitment process. As for work experience on your gap year, it is almost obligatory in competitive professions, such as the media, to work long hours willingly and for no payment.

The gap year industry has developed to accommodate this. You will be surprised by what is available — from television production in Honduras to working on a fashion magazine in Shanghai. All will look good on your CV. If you choose to work to earn money for university, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages of the daily slog in the office. Working for a living not only helps out with funding but it also gives a student a work ethic, a bank balance and an idea of how his or her studies apply to the real world. Would you rather attend a job interview with a portfolio of university projects or take a range of real-life examples and references confirming your skills? Your gap year does not have to be all work. It is possible to toil for nine months, volunteer in your local community at weekends, as well as travel or volunteer overseas and still have time and money left to prepare for university.

The key is to be aware of your position now and to be honest about how right it is for you. Get it wrong and you will waste thousands of pounds, start your career with a debt you regret and probably end up starting all over again between the ages of 28 and 35.

Get it right and the world will open up to you. There is little difference between working for 43 years instead of 44. It is important, therefore, to understand your bigger picture.