Official statistics indicate that taking a gap year boosts the chance of achieving a first-class degree. According to the numbers, on average, undergraduate students who deferred their university were more likely to achieve a first-class degree (18 per cent compared with 12 per cent) and more likely to have gone on to obtain a masters or postgraduate degree than those who went straight to university from school.
The numbers come at a time when the Universities fear that thousands of British teenagers will shun higher education this autumn, costing hundreds of millions of pounds in lost fees, on top of the loss from foreign international students who are most likely to opt out owing to the coronavirus crisis.
According to a survey last month about a fifth of students said they would not enroll in the next academic year if classes were delivered online and other university activities curtailed. This could lead to 120,000 fewer students and a loss of £760 million in fees. The sector is pushing the message that students should not defer and that there will still be some face-to-face teaching alongside online lectures. It stresses that the alternatives will not be palatable as there is unlikely to be unfettered global travel and jobs will be scarce. Students who were due to reply to their offers faced uncertainty because of coronavirus. This was consistent across groups who graduated before, during and after the last economic recession in 2008.
However, it was not clarified whether this was causal or because higher-achieving students were more likely to take a year out.
