1. The students calling it a “gap year” may be a psychological technique to reinforce to themselves that it is just a “gap”. They are asserting to themselves

1. The students calling it a “gap year” may be a psychological technique to reinforce to themselves that it is just a “gap”. They are asserting to themselves and their support group that they will return. 2. She’s asserting without supporting data that families will “get used to the money”. (because lower class families are just like that?) and put psychological pressure on the student not to return to school. Might be reasonable...might not. Where’s the data? NPR would want that before they broadcast it. Also sounds a bit classist. I can believe there is objective data that the longer a prospective student stays away from “the system”, the less likely they will return. Whether this is good or bad for the prospective student, short term and long term, is the relevant question. Presuming academic higher education always a good thing could be seen as siding with Higher Ed as just another industry. NPR isn’t in the business of supporting one particular subsector of the economy. Opening the can of worms of academic higher education as a universal good, there is the fact that a college degree is on average worth X (find your favorite number online), but it is unclear whether this is a class issue (e.g. the college educated would get their kids slotted into a better life, college or no). NPR might not have wanted to get into that discussion, again classist. Getting an education is still the way to go, or at least the way to bet. What kind of education (vocational v. academic v. on-the-job/Executive MBA/certification) and how that education is obtained in 2020 and beyond (remote, on-campus, autodidactic, live v. recorded) are open questions into which NPR wouldn’t have wanted to get entangled. NPR is nominally serving the entire US population, not just the academic college-educated. Just my take.