ROCKPORT — Everyone is dismayed, but at the same time everyone has seemed to accept this fact: A college degree today can often cost as much as buying a home.

What is surprising is that too few parents and students really ask the tough questions about how to wisely invest in this undertaking. It is about much more than reputation and rankings. The real question is: What are you going to do with higher education, and when will you be prepared to do it?

Would you purchase a home in a town you’ve never lived in and where you don’t have a job? Should you invest in even one of four precious (and outrageously expensive) years of higher education if you don’t know what you want to do with that education and where it may take you? Neither is advisable, unless you have a lot of extra cash and are a compulsive risk-taker.

I won’t argue the old adage that “youth is wasted on the young” (who better to enjoy it?), but as someone who has taught and worked with hundreds of young college students over the years, I can say at least that higher education is often squandered on the too young.

Gaining experience to help make decisions about what to do with college before college can save both time and money in the long run. I am, therefore, an ardent supporter of the gap year experience, as profiled in the recent Press Herald article “More graduates push pause, see benefits of pre-college ‘gap year’ “ (May 2).

The type of programmatic “gap year” highlighted there, however, which often is a packaged commodity with prohibitive fees, is but one variety. The reality is that the majority of students at Maine schools may not have access, financially or otherwise, to these types of typical and typically expensive gap year programs. There are other – and, frankly, sometimes better – alternatives.

My advice to a Maine high school graduate: If your mother or your father is truly well-connected enough to get you a fabulous internship with an employer in London, or Buenos Aires, or Seoul, by all means go for it. And if so, chances are that may also mean that your family has the wherewithal to help you finance such an undertaking.

But if not, perhaps you should save a big and potentially expensive adventure like this for later in your college career, when your higher level of experience may help you secure a better opportunity. If you can get academic credit for it, you also may find that financial aid will help to pay for it then.

In the meantime, take a year (or two, or three) to explore your own world a little more and gain experience and maturity. Get a job at a local lumber yard, intern with a human service agency or work the cash register at your town’s Hannaford while taking a class at your local community college or University of Maine satellite campus.

It may not look as “sexy” on your resume, but don’t assume that a college admissions officer will discount its value. You may not learn the correct way to order wine at a sidewalk cafe in Florence, but chances are you will learn a good deal more about the hard work of real life.

In other words, you may be much better prepared to take full advantage of the opportunities offered to you by higher education (and what comes after) and much less likely to misspend your prime learning years on a social life fueled by the high costs of college tuition.

If you’re determined to travel and see the world, save your money for a self-planned and self-arranged sojourn abroad. Use your time there (even if measured in weeks instead of months) to pursue and learn more about a particular interest or to offer your service through an agency, church or volunteer group that may give you some basic accommodation in return for your sweat and sore muscles.

Or enroll in a program at a language school in another country; these can often provide a productive, very cost-effective way to have a learning adventure overseas and may offer some extra academic credits when you do get to college. It takes work to identify and set up such opportunities, but it can be done and at a fraction of the cost of a packaged program.

Gap year(s)? Absolutely! But make it count, and don’t imagine that its value is defined by its cost or even its distance from home.