I’ve noticed an increasing chorus of voices advising high-school graduates to take a gap year rather than start their college education online. This strikes me as *spectacularly* bad advice.

First, what are they going to do with their gap year? Travel the world? Get a job in the worst labour market in a century, competing with many overqualified unemployed people?

If by some miracle they land a job… how is a job over zoom (or a job that can give you COVID) somehow better than an education over zoom? If higher education is constrained by COVID, the rest of the world is as well.

How much is that job going to pay? The salary differential between high school graduates and college graduates is enormous. Looking at your life as a whole, would you rather maximize your low wage or your high wage years?

Apply next year? Sure – you’ll have to compete with next year crop of high-school graduates, plus all those who took a gap year like you. New graduates will have fresher recommendations, knowledge, and grades.

You do not feel like paying brick-and-mortar tuition fees for an online education. I get that, and think universities could make some goodwill gestures. But large tuition cuts are not going to happen. Teaching online is actually costlier than doing it in person.

What you are paying for is the option of having your remaining seven semesters be brick and mortar, and a degree from a recognized institution. This has not change, and captures the bulk of the value of your degree.

Have you thought about the world you will graduate into? When you start your college degree determines when you finish it. If the COVID situation resolves in the next 12-18 months, then 2024 sounds like a good time to be hunting for a job.

Yes, none of this is as good as it would be without COVID, but that world no longer exists, and is not coming back. Systemic shocks hit everybody. The faster you adapt, the best chance you have at thriving in the new statu quo. This still means getting the best education you can.

That said, I am not worried at all about high school graduates taking the wrong advice. Our program currently has the highest number of accepted offers of admission ever, and that seems to be the case for universities all over. The kids are all right.