Gap Year Goes Online with Year On

Welcome everyone to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horne. Really excited about today's conversation with Charlie Tabe, the CEO of Year on a gap year program. Charlie, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me today, Michael. It's great to be here.

Yeah, I'm thrilled. Our mutual friend Mike Berlin introduced us from Entangled Now Guild Education with our news this past week of our acquisition. But this conversation around the importance of gap years, I think before COVID 19 hit was really important. It certainly stepped up in the public consciousness since this occurred. But I'd love to take a step back. First, for people who are tuning in and may not know what year on is or was, can you describe what you're on? Looks like how maybe it differs from some other gap year programs out there and what was sort of the purpose or driving force behind it?

Definitely. So Year on is a multi phase structured gap year program. We combine service learning with skill building, both personal and professional, with one on one personalized coaching. Our students go through a curriculum of wayfinding to learn more about themselves and what it is they want to do. And then they transition to a professional development curriculum that helps them do career exploration and build a portfolio of work that they can showcase before they even walk into college. And, and for me, when we first started this, I was thinking about myself really when I graduated college and when I graduated school, I didn't get my dream job at one of the big four. And I was crushed, absolutely crushed. So I went abroad and lived in China for a while. I took intensive Mandarin courses and then I got a teaching certificate. And quickly I stumbled upon this startup that was teaching English and kind of rose through the company. And I realized that it was really important for me to think about who I was during that time. That accounting wasn't really for me. And when I think about our gap year program, that's what it really is. I went to a Jesuit university, so a lot of the elements of our school are reflected in our program. That idea of cura personalis that you have to take care of the whole being. It's not just about career exploration. It's about. It's not just about you. It's how do you combine all of these things? How do you serve other people while also thinking about yourself? And we've now been around for over six years now. We've run over 300 students through the program. And our goal is really to give people that confidence, clarity and direction for their next step.

Makes a ton of sense. I'm curious just A little bit as you in what the program looked like historically. Give folks a sense of as they're doing the professional development, exploration and things of that nature. And then some of this personal reflection it sounds like, of how do they serve and figure out how do they contribute. What does that look like? Is it a series of relationships with different entities? Is it boot camp type experiences? What does that historically look like?

Great question and thanks for using the word historically because obviously things will be very different as we're now in Covid world. But yeah, you know, historically when we think about a student's education trajectory which is, you know, is. Is true Covid or not, you are in a hyper, a hyper structured environment your entire life. I mean you go through K12 and you wake up in the morning, you go to school and period after period, you maybe do a after school activity or a sport, you get on the light bus, you go home, dinner, homework, sleep, maybe TikTok in there and repeat right every single day for almost your entire life. And then you get to college and that doesn't exist. You know, when you. We talk with parents and they ask us, well, what is my student really going to be doing during this program? I ask, do you know what 15 credits means? You know, how many hours are they in a classroom a week? And it's surprising that many people don't quite understand that transition from I'm in School from 8:30am until 3:30pm every day straight. Maybe you have a free period and lunch in there, but then you go into college and you're in school for 15 hours a week, which really is not a lot of time. Right? So we think about this, we've thought about this in a way where we wanted to send students abroad as the first piece of our program. Because what we really wanted to do was to show them that learning can happen in everyday life, in everything that you do. But really we want to switch up the environment for them so that they kind of realize that, wow, I can learn from other people, I can learn from my neighbor, I can learn from this community that I'm in. I can learn through this project. So we had them go abroad. We have five international locations, Tanzania, Mexico, India, Indonesia and Peru. The students are able to pick their service project that they participate in during that time. And they go through our curriculum which is really starting to identify who am I as a person. And you know, we allow them to really ease into that in the beginning. We're asking them to think about, okay, what is the difference between, you know, the world that I come from and the world that I'm now, you know, living side by side in. And towards the end of that 10 weeks, they start to do some of the more in, I would say in depth training with themselves. So starting to think about who am I and where do I want to go, what are my strengths, what am I interested in? And then from there we bring them all to San Francisco. And when they're in San Francisco, that's when we start to work really on the portfolio building for them to start the career exploration to put a value set down and then really make decisions based on what that value set is. I think that there's an important piece of a gap year where students are, they are, they do have this time to, you know, maybe some people use the words take one step back, to take two steps forward. And I think that what we usually get is we see a lot of students that come to us and say, can I just like take a Scantron that will tell me what I can do for the rest of my, the rest of my life? We're like, well, it doesn't quite work like that. And we also want to be very clear that, you know, having a value of some sort is not a destination. You don't just like, one day be creative, right? It's something that you're always striving for. So how do you then start to make decisions based on who you are as, as a person instead of, you know, oh, the market isn't doing right now? I remember when I was in undergraduate, I did all of the work to think about where I wanted to go to college. And I'm the oldest of four, so, you know, a lot of that was, you know, was put on me to do. And I did those informational interviews with, you know, my parents, with the friends, with my friends parents on what do you do and how can I maybe think about that? And I came down to this point where I was like, okay, I want to go into accounting. I've now interviewed a lot of people. They all seem to like what they do. I guess I'm not going to go learn Spanish or Mandarin, but I really like, I really do like math. So I guess I'll keep math in there as something that I also do. So I went through college and like, those were my minors. You know, I majored in Asian studies, mathematical sciences. And then I made, I minored in those and then I majored in accounting. And I look back at that and I'm like, who was I listening to then? Like, I had no idea who I was. Like, I was this, this young man that was listening to, you know, everyone around me. I'm from Long Island, New York. There's a very prescriptive path that you take as a New Yorker. I mean, you go to school, you go to college, you get that apartment in Manhattan, you work your butt off. And then, you know, maybe you then have a house in the Hamptons and a house in Manhattan and you do the commute thing. I mean, it is just, it's what people do. And that's what I was listening to. And that wasn't me. But I didn't know how to do that deep work of thinking about, like, what does wayfinding even mean? Was that a term that we even used, you know, 10 years ago?

I was gonna say that is a new term. Right, right.

It's a new term. So I, and I think that that was what. Then when I went to China, I realized this is what learning is about and I really need to dedicate time to myself. And I mean, and a lot of personal growth happened during that time. I came out of the closet when I was in China. I mean, these were really huge steps that I needed to take. For me, that we are now packaging and bottling in a way where students can experience them before they go into college. So they're not only thinking about the career and the major, which is what we start to really hyper focus on, but. But they also think about them and like, that's the, that should be the foundation. And then once you have that, then yes, then you should start thinking about, okay, well now how does this manifest in a way that brings me joy every single day and I can walk through life and feel like a really fulfilled person?

No, that makes a ton of sense. I'm struck just by how many gap year programs. In many ways, gap year, it reinforces my belief that it's really a misleading phrase because you're all so focused on the. Developing the whole person, developing that person in relation to others, in relation to society. How can you contribute? The sense of purpose and contribution is just. It jumps out in all these, in what you have. Right. And it's not just you. I think a lot of the folks that I've been interviewing are similar in that way. I'm curious. Now we're in this post Covid world and at least for the time being, the world isn't going to go back to the way it was. No one knows what it will look like ultimately. You all, I think, have distinguished yourself for how rapidly you've started to roll out an online program. So tell us about what that's going to look like. What are going to be the new components that still give students the experiences that you were just describing. And how do you see it fitting together? I'm assuming going abroad is no longer part of it, just to. Just to start off with something that I assume has changed dramatically.

Sure. And, you know, before I get into that, I just want to say, you know, the gap year space, all the folks that have been working in this space for, you know, the past, you know, 20, 30, 40 years, they have really been intentional about what a gap year can be. And I do think that it is unfortunate that we use the word gap year only because we. It connotes that, you know, you are going into this period of time where you're potentially going to miss something. So thanks for highlighting that. I think that's why we called the company year on. We wanted to make it really clear this is not a year off. That's what many people think when they think gap year. And that's really not what we're doing. And I know that my colleagues in the space have been, you know, they work round the clock to make sure that people really do understand that. I think that that's a branding challenge that we have. So I, you know, I like, I like Abby Fallock's idea of calling it a bridge year. I like how we think about these different terms for people to understand that, like, this isn't a place where you're going to go into and then never come out of, which is what some people do think. But it's really a place of awesome transformation if you take this year for yourself to go into what we're thinking about for online. So, yes, we've had these transformational programs. Our flagship program has always started off internationally and then it's come to San Francisco. And then students build their own adventure for a third phase with the support of their coach. And you're right. In the COVID world, I know that there are some programs that are still holding on to holding onto going abroad for the fall, similar to the way a lot of universities still are saying we are going to be rolling out on campus in full force come September. We have made the decision not to do that. We are. We just don't think that it's prudent at this time. I think that we're really in the beginning innings of COVID 19. And so we've decided to switch to a domestic, domestic location for our year Long students. So we're signing domestic partnerships all across the United States right now that still allow students to give back. And I think that's something that's really been amazing for me is that you don't need to go far to find really awesome communities that have challenges that they want support on and that I think that young people really will appreciate. So we're signing all of those now and we'll be excited to announce what those kind of look like. And that will be everything from, you know, volunteering on a political campaign to working in an animal sanctuary over the course of this fall, which I think will be really neat.

That's terrific. I mean, and like you said, just. Just to make the obvious point, you know, going abroad obviously gives you a certain sense of cultural identity, right. And how you fit in in a global way.

And.

But there are so many opportunities to figure out your own purpose and passions and what sticks with you and what doesn't in a very service oriented way domestically. Because we certainly know our nation needs a lot of support right now.

It does. And I think that, you know, this age demographic is really clued into what that really looks like. So I think that they are also in a spot to be able to support the country, which I think could be very powerful over the coming months and years to talk about our virtual program a little bit. So when we thought about this, we actually had thought about going virtual before COVID even started, which is why we were probably able to get things up and running very quickly. We actually had this conversation in early January and we started the production of building out our platform. But when we started to envision this, what I said was we need to build something that is, if not one to one with our offline program, even better. And I think that we've done that, which is really exciting for me to think about over the course of this fall. So we're going to launch a semester program first and then roll that into a year long program. Our semester program will be 15 weeks and it will combine all the elements that our offline year long program combines, but it will be in a shorter period of time. So it'll be split up into two phases. The first phase we call Explore at year on and that's usually earmarked for our time when students go abroad and do their service learning. We are going to be doing a wayfinding core curriculum during that time. So it will be five weeks of wayfinding where they'll really sit down and do a lot of life design on that Personal front. So everything from, you know, how do I think about my values and subscribe to growth mindset to how do I put some Odyssey plans down and think about what the next three to five years are going to look like for myself? And that will be the morning curriculum that they'll go through. It'll be asynchronous and synchronous content every single day for almost two hours. And then in the afternoon, we're starting to work with volunteer or organizations throughout the country that need virtual volunteers. So we're still stimulating this idea and it's going to be real. I mean, this isn't like work on a case study. This is, you're going to be talking to a person that, you know, tutors students after school. And this is something that you're able to do. And this is a way for you to give back all while you're really learning a whole bunch of skills where, you know, maybe you realize that we're pretty explicit at yearon, so we like to write out all the things that you're going to be learning. But there will be a lot of implicit learnings that you'll have as well. And I'm excited for what that looks like. In the, in the five different fields that we're going after right now, we're looking at education, health, finance, government and environment. So we really. A big part of what we do is giving students agency over their learning. And I think that this will be really important over the, over the coming months, especially because they all were kind of abruptly ripped from their schools in the spring. And then after that five, five weeks, they're going to go into our 10 week skill building phase. And that will look very similar to what our San Francisco phase looks like. All of our content will be online. They'll start to work with a coach. Our coaches are, you know, the reason why I use personalized learning is because our students work one on one with a coach and they're able to actually meet with them every single week and work with them on executive functioning skills. So they get a goal sheet and they start to really help them think about, you know, what do I want to do and what does that mean? So you have, of course, the underlying curriculum that brings you through that career exploration piece of, okay, I'm interested in X, Y and Z fields. Now what? Okay, let's go to 10 meetups and let's see if those are interesting for you. Then let's have some informational interviews. Before you get to the informational interview, maybe you have to learn how to do a cold email, right? Maybe you have to make sure that your resume is teed up. You need to learn how to conduct that interview with someone. And these are all skills that we're teaching them in real time. And then they're being able to apply and they're working with their coach. And that's what's really beautiful about the program. Because you can have someone like young Charlie who is interested in accounting and can go do that, but you can also have someone who is interested in I want to be an artist. Okay, well what does that mean? Is that something that you want to do as a hobby or is that something you want to do, you want to have as a career? And then you can go explore those two routes. So we're going to have that and then in the afternoon for this virtual experience, they're going to be in an externship. So again, I think that the point here is that I am a really big proponent of how do we make sure that students get these practical experiences that are hyper relevant, that they can answer their portfolio. But also, you know, we can use a lot of words for this, but I'll just say it are not boring. I mean, you know, we laugh about, oh, my first internship, I got coffee for my boss or I did the copying, copying things and we laugh and it's true. And. But we also think that there's a world in which that doesn't need to be the case. 18 year olds are very capable individuals. The students that we work with, they amaze me. Day in and day out we do these, we do like mini hackathons at year on we call them work sprints. So they're 36 hours where a student gets to jam on anything they want. We have different themes for different ones and what they come out with after 36 hours is amazing. Like I built, I was interested in design, so I pushed myself to build 50 logos and put them all on 99 designs. And I won some competitions with them or I'm interested in painting. So I painted all these different artists to see, like is this something that I really want to do? So we're really intentional about making sure that students are doing this, you know, really this deep work. I think that a lot of, a lot of times you realize that you're just focusing on the top of the T and that's really good for exploration. But then what does deliberate practice really look like? If you do find out that you're interested in this one piece, how do you take that all the Way down. How do you really work on that and decide like, hey, I want to take the next step in this. And if you don't, I think it's great. Because at year on, this isn't college, this isn't, oh, I'm now in October and I'm five weeks into my college. Exactly. I got to take the W or I've got to suck it up, whatever it is. That's not what a gap year should be. A gap year should be about exploration, but it should be intentional. That's why again, we're called a year on and not a year off. I think that I say to parents and students all the time, you're going to get out what you put in.

I love the way you also just described that of the top of the T and then actually going deep in the exploration. So you can really prototype in essence what it would be like to be in X career field, whatever that might be, so that you can, you know, it's one thing to have someone who loves what they do describe to you how awesome it is. And another thing to say, does that actually resonate with me on a day to day basis? And so that, that makes a ton of sense. I'm curious, do you already have a sense of what the interest is in this online program from, from individuals? How large do you think? I'm assuming it's easier to scale this in some ways, although I guess the partnership piece is the limiting factor. I just love a sense of what that looks like.

Yeah, so we're getting a lot of inbound right now. I think that, you know, there's two, there's two groups, I would say, of people at this moment in time. There's the group that's really saying, hey, I am going to be doing some kind of volunteer experience this fall. And I'm holding on to that. And I really hope that it happens. And I hope that it happens too. I really hope that over the course of the next couple of months, you know, as a nation, we can really understand, you know, Covid 19's effects and we can really flatten the curve to a point where we can get back to some kind of normalcy. And then there's the group of people who are saying, regardless of what is going to go on this fall, I'm going to commit right now because the, because there's no predictability, kind of sitting in this purgatory, am I going to go to college? Am I not going to go to college? I had to put this deposit down by May 1st now it's June 1st. They're still announcing that they're going to run classes. What if August they pull that court? I mean, I really feel for these parents, I feel for university administrators who have to make all of these really difficult decisions right now on, you know, I spoke with university is thinking about putting plexiglass around their desks and taking the count of students down from 30 to 12. I mean, these are just huge decisions that we have to make that will really make the experience much different for students walking into school and students who are already in school, to be honest. But that camp of people who said it's just not worth the stress right now, they're the ones that are reaching out and saying, like, what is this virtual experience? And we're getting a lot of inbound right now. So that's what, you know, the team has been working round the clock on how to develop that, how to make sure that it's good. Because we don't want, we want people to really understand that if you take this time, we want you to really seize it. We want you to be able to make it into what you want to make it into, not what we say. And I think that that's also an important piece for young people. This project based learning, this peer to peer learning, this understanding what your paths are. That's all stuff that we can get to them online. So now how do we make that? How do we get that to them and how do we make it as best we can make it?

Is it your sense that the program. I actually don't know what's the size of the program in traditional years. And is it your sense that it'll grow actually this year?

Totally. I think that with the, with the virtual program, we're probably going to see like 5x what we normally run. So we usually run between like two. We usually run between 20 and 50 students in a, in a cohort for the offline program. And, you know, I think that that's, it's a good size. It allows 10 students to go to each international location and then all 50 of them come and, you know, do college light in San Francisco, as we sometimes say. And that's a, that's a great size to build a community. So we're trying to model that where we're going to have small classroom sizes where, you know, we don't want fatigue, we don't want kind of that zoom fatigue. We know that there is, you know, this reticence right now to get online. So we want to make sure that it feels engaging. So you're going to be able to have like, you know, maybe a group of 15 people that is in your class and then you're going to be doing breakout sessions every single day. I mean, there is going to be. The accountability will be, will be between students, not between, you know, facilitators and students, which I think is very different, but will be very powerful.

That's exciting. And then I'm curious, you know, zoom out now from year on because this is a pretty compelling set of experiences you're crafting right now. It sounds like, what do you think it's going to look like nationally? I mean, obviously it's hard to say anything until people actually make the switch and don't show up on college campuses in the fall or online as it may be in college in the fall. But what's your sense of what this moment is going to mean for the growth of gap years and people maybe not going to college? Do you have early projections on that?

I think that we're, I think that we are in a very unique space and time right now. I do think that as students walk away from what university looks like for this fall, if they can get something that is comparable to what they were going to do in university, we might see some different, some different learning vehicles come out of this. Right. I mean, there's some really cool, structured ways to think about how to rethink higher education. I think that a part that a lot of folks give enough credit to college for is the cohort and the community aspect. I think that especially young people, they crave that. I mean, I crave that. You know, I'm 30 years old and I miss seeing my friends. Right. I live in my apartment in San Francisco and I do wish that I was able to still have that. And I think that that's just really powerful for any type of learning community. So I think that we're going to see pods of students with shared interests be able to, you know, find a co living space or find something more like maybe a trade school that they can go to so they can learn this skill and build that community of learners with, with one another. I also think that the gap year in and of itself is going to become more of a mainstay in the United States. I mean, historically we've seen between 1 and 3% of students take a gap year in the US as compared to like the UK and Australia. They have about 11% right now. People are projecting that up to 16, maybe even up to 25% of students are thinking about taking a gap year this year. I think that this is going to something where people think about what matters to me, what do I want to do, and how do I explore that during a much more feasible year than, you know, maybe a private liberal arts school which costs, you know, almost $80,000 to attend? How can I do that cheaper? How can I add a job into that so I can be making money during it? But how can I get this relevant experience so I can walk in? You know, we're not exactly, you know, saying that college isn't worth it, but we're saying that you should go in with more of an idea. And I think that you wrote about this in your book. Like, what job is college doing for you? Think about it like this. Frame this. Frame this like this. And if you think about your gap year like that, well, what job is your gap year doing for you? Is it to find out more about who you are and what you want to do? Great. Is it to just think about a career? Awesome. Is it, hey, I want to save money. Okay. Like, all of these things are absolutely appropriate. I think what the piece that's still missing, though, is actually asking yourself that question and then following through on it. And that's where. That's where we're at right now.

That makes a ton of sense. And so if it becomes more mainstream, even out of this crisis, right. And we do see the numbers that go up, which, again, to your point, I think we should do it just became loud and clear. And I've seen some articles in the last couple days pushing back on the notion of gap year. You need to get going in college. It's a waste of time economically. It doesn't pay off. You know, what if you don't complete, that'll hurt you way more than wasting, you know, and wasting time in college where you're sort of adrift compared to taking a year to invest in yourself and figuring out what you actually want to do and more about you so you come into college raring to go is a way better use of time. That all said, you know, if this in fact represents a bigger shift in the perception of gap year, we start seeing it as a year on as opposed to a year off. What are your big pieces of advice for students and families looking at this, that that gap year experience must have in your mind?

What are. What.

What are the two to three things to make it a productive experience? What are the two to three things that they ought to be sure are certainly part of that experience?

That's a great question. And I think that it's really important. And maybe the people that are tuning into this, they already know these statistics. But I mean, the United States, like our higher ed system, like, we have a really tough time getting students through school. We have 30% of students that are dropping out of their freshman year. Only 60% make it through in four years. I mean, these are startling, startling numbers. People are unemployed, underemployed. Once they do graduate. I mean, this is. When we talk about this, it's not just throwing a year to the wind. This is a time for you to put some stakes in the ground so you understand the investment that you're making so you can make the most out of that investment. You want to get the return on that investment. So I do think that the gap year is important in that way. I think that if you are taking a gap year and you. You want to make it for you and your family thinks that this is the right step for you, you've got to make sure that someone is going to hold you accountable during it. I think that this is a really important part. I mean, there are so many different things you can do during a gap year. I obviously have a. Have a bias towards making sure that is as holistic as possible. Humans don't grow in vacuums. You cannot just concentrate on one thing and then expect that everything else will fall into place. I mean, we see this through industries, right, where people focus on one skill, but then they can't talk to one another. Like, this is, like, that's not. It's not productive at the end of the day. So I would challenge you to think about how can you make your year dynamic. And I mean, obviously I have a model for that that I think works. I think that having some kind of time where you give back, where you think about where you take your take, just get out of your body a little bit and understand, like, who am I and what do I want to do? While you're giving back to a community can be really powerful. I think that focusing on some professional skills and thinking about, how do I walk out of this time with a portfolio and again, plant the seeds. It doesn't need to be perfect, but this is the time, you know, you don't want to graduate college or go into your senior year. Like, I didn't build my resume until I was, you know, going into. Going into my senior year, my junior summer, where I realized, oh, everybody's getting internships. I should probably do that. You know, these are things that you can start to do. And I think that having a coach or that accountability buddy that's able to work with you every single, every single day, every single week, that will make a huge difference in between, you know, your success for your gap year or turning your gap year into a time where, you know, okay, I'm just going to read this book. I'm going to read this case study. How. What's the follow up to that? How are you making. How are you bringing that into the world? How are you making sure that it actually translates? You know, we think about. There's a quote that a colleague of mine always says, and he talks about how a professor, I can talk about teaching you how to snowboard all I want. I can show you videos, I can show you moves, I can do tricks in front of the room. Until you do it, you're not going to know how to snowboard at all. And I think that that's really true. I think that this is where this is the time for students to apply those skills in a real way, to get some feedback and use then those new inputs for new outputs.

That's a perfect way, I think, to wrap this up and give people really sound advice for how they frame this opportunity before them. And that's what I would ask people to do. And I'm sure you'd say the same, reframe it not as a year off, as you said, but a year on. You can learn more. And I encourage you all to learn more@you're on.com, not just about the online experience that you're crafting, but about all the work that you've done over the last several years helping people have this experience and really a formative experience to learn about themselves. Charlie, thank you so much for coming on and keep doing great work.

Thanks so much, Michael.