US President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama announced that Malia “will take a gap year before beginning school”. She’ll head to Harvard in 2017, after a gap year, her family said Sunday.
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Malia, who turns 18 in July, is a senior at the prestigious Sidwell Friends School here.
And there’s more bad news, which I’ve written about before: Only 11% of employers say that college graduates are ready for the workforce.
Harvard and many other prestigious U.S. universities now encourage applicants to consider taking a “gap year” before starting college to alleviate the stress and burn-out that often result from their pressure-filled high school years.
There’s a certain stigma around taking a year off before college in the US – images of slipper-clad teens binge-watching Netflix come to mind – but there are plenty of higher education leaders who would love to see more American students follow in Malia’s footsteps.
American universities including Princeton, Tufts and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have formal gap-year programmes, which give students the option of participating in a structured year of service overseas or in the United States, depending on the institution. Malia is taking a year off after graduating from high school before attending Harvard University as part of an expanding program for students known as a “gap year”.
Malia Obama will be one of the most famous members of her class – and a standout for the Secret Service agents who will protect her.
America’s high school students “should be following Malia’s lead and getting off the conveyor belt that leads them to follow the well-plotted and well-trod course to college simply because they don’t know what else to do with their lives”, the Post’s “analysis” writer, Jeffrey J. Selingo, writes – in the course of plugging his book, “There Is Life After College”. greg14: LITTLE APE SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE IN AFRICA, ashes2dust: Hopefully she gets cancer/aids or one of those colored diseases.
Malia’s much-speculated-upon decision, announced in a news release after months of official silence from the White House about her college search process, will make her the latest in a long line of presidential children to attend the elite university in Cambridge, Mass.
President Obama graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991.
“I’m going to be sitting there with dark glass, sobbing”, he told Ellen DeGeneres during an appearance on her talk show. Malia’s more than ready to leave, but I’m not ready for her to leave. The president is a Columbia graduate and also got his law degree from Harvard. Malia spent a summer in New York City interning on the set of HBO’s “Girls”, and in the summer of 2014 worked as a production assistant on “Extant”, a CBS sci-fi drama featuring Halle Berry.
She appears to have disregarded her parents’ advice.
We should, as a nation, be proud to see Malia Obama, one of our first daughters, attending one of the top universities not only in our country but in the world.
While the idea of going overseas for service work or even non-academic experiential learning closer to home might turn off some parents, there’s something to be said for building homes in Thailand or teaching children English in Spain, experts say.
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“Announcement: I too have chose to take a gap year before the rest of my adulthood”, she tweeted.
