When in Doubt, "Stop Out"

More and more students are hitting the road instead of the books

Harvard's daily, the Crimson, publishes a news digest titled "The Real World." Traditionally, that was a place undergraduates had to wait many years to see firsthand. But now more and more students, finding that it is a long way from kindergarten to graduate school, are "stopping out," as educators put it. At Stanford, almost a quarter of all students take at least one leave of absence. The stop-out rate at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania has ranged between 43% and 56% in recent years. Says Dr. Robert Dunham, vice president for undergraduate studies at Penn State, where leave-taking is up a third since 1971: "Stopping out is more prevalent now. Students are a lot more relaxed."

For many of those who stop out, the year (or years) off can prove more arduous than college itself. Stanford Senior Doug Patt, a campus graybeard at 28, has twice interrupted his college career to "see how life is out there in the streets." What he saw, in such jobs as that of supervisor at an Alaska salmon cannery, persuaded him to return for his degree last fall, almost a decade after he entered college. Rice University Senior Charles Lansdell, another 28-year-old, who is graduating this spring, spent three years as a clerk at the First City National Bank of Houston. Among his discoveries: he could never be content with his $9,600 clerk's salary.

Other leave-takers sound similar hard-knocks themes, which may help explain the high number of students who eventually return: over 90% at most colleges.

After World War II, when thousands of undergraduates were studying under Government grants, universities did not encourage stopping out. In the '60s, another deterrent to would-be leave-takers arose: the draft. But in the less urgent '70s, many administrators have come to promote a year off. "Even those who do work they would never want to do again --vending pretzels, for example--find a year or two off to be a positive experience," notes Princeton Assistant Dean Richard G. Williams. Adds Yale Dean of Undergraduate Studies Martin Griffin: "Students come back with at least marginally clearer focus and a clear head." Often it is the students themselves who hesitate, concerned about parental opposition, the difficulty of obtaining a decent job, and the tuition increases they will face upon return. Says Williams: "Students spend more time worrying about whether to leave or not than about what they will do if they leave."

Few who stop out regret the decision, and most feel that the experience helps clarify their career aims. "The year away was very much worth it," says Johns Hopkins Junior Sue Matesic, 22, who worked with a Bible study group. "Now I am sure of what I want to do." She returned to school persuaded that she could best put her religious beliefs into practice in a career in politics. Princeton Junior Steven Hayishi, 20, took a job as a hospital orderly for ten months; he came back convinced that medicine was his vocation.

So did fellow Pre-Med Steven Shafer, 24, who dropped out after the first week of his junior year, hitched a trailer to his car and headed for California. Two years later he was back in school, still eager to pursue medicine but also possessing some valuable souvenirs of his stop-out period, including a pilot's license, a fair knowledge of American literature, and the ownership of a computer software firm that grossed $300,000 last year.

Stanford's Patt, whose stop out included a stint as a partner in a management agency for recording artists, also claims to have acquired a business education on his own. Touring with Blues Singer Sunnyland Slim, he recalls, taught him about "money, Cadillacs, how to handle myself." When he came back to college, it was with a pragmatic sense of how to go about the career he had chosen: film production. Says Patt: "I learned in the street that if you want something, you've got to go for it."

During the era of political turmoil on campus a decade ago, stopping out was often a gesture of defiance. Now it is just as likely to indicate ambition. Oliver Miller, 24, a Yale senior who will be leaving for Oxford this fall as a Rhodes scholar, took off for two years in 1975 and wound up in Atlanta, where he became one of two aides on the issues staff of the fledgling Jimmy Carter presidential campaign. "It was an incredible education," he recalls, "the kind I don't think you could ever get from a textbook." Paul Albritton, 21, a Yale junior who spent last year working in Latin America for a Houston-based public health organization, echoes Miller. "You go for so many years in a classroom with theoretical models being placed in front of you," he complains. "Getting out and working, getting your hands dirty, gives you a much better idea of what you are studying."

Undergraduates who hesitate to stop out for fear of seeming too nonconformist might contemplate the example of their professors, who generally take a sabbatical every seven years; Bennington College, which has for four decades required its students to leave campus each winter and work for a term; or former Haverford President John R. Coleman, who once left his office and hired himself out for two months as a dishwasher, garbage collector, and in other unscholarly trades. Even more assuring is the case of Stanford Grad Margaret Doerr. She enrolled in the class of 1931 and finally graduated last August, a sprightly coed aged 66.

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