In Cincinnati, employers and educators alike confirm a variety of benefits, for students, for employers, and for the educational institutions themselves. In addition, the benefits of co-op education are all the more powerful given the nature of the sub-baccalaureate labor market for which two-year colleges prepare students.
However, a caveat is necessary. As we mentioned above, there is virtually no data about the effects of co-op programs on completion of educational programs, or later placement rates in employment, or subsequent patterns of promotion and earnings. While the benefits of co-op programs are consistently mentioned by educators and employers, their statements are entirely anecdotal, and because of their participation in co-op, they are not disinterested observers.[23] It is important to be careful, therefore, in interpreting the testimonials presented in this section.
It's something other than sitting in a classroom or even in a lab; it's the real world. You drew it, you just put it together, and it still doesn't work. But we're on a deadline, we've got to have this done because we've got a customer that's screaming for it, you know. So here is the real world. Students seem to appreciate their programs more when they go back into the classroom; they understand things more.The argument that co-op is a valuable pedagogy in its own right emerged again and again. One of the co-op coordinators expressed his college's philosophy as follows:
Number one, we think that cooperative education is a superior form of education in that it not only teaches students about the theory of vocational or what they're studying, but it also teaches them the practical application of that. Therefore, they can apply the theory that they're learning in the classroom in their minds a lot more clearly. They understand why they're studying structures or why they're studying a subject because they've seen how it's used in industry.Employers also emphasized that students benefit from the real-world experience of co-op:
Well, they get to apply what they've learned in college. They get to grow up. It's experience and everybody says it's experience they get in the real world because there is just no match for it. And when the time comes to graduate, I think they're going to know what they want to do. And if they didn't co-op, they wouldn't. And they get a chance to have happy times, disappointing times, frustrating times, and that's just a part of working.A co-op coordinator at CTC explained the importance of gaining experience:
It's like practice. You get a chance to do a job . . . That's the neat thing about co-op because you're not sure and you get to go out and you try it out and you get to see what those people do, day in and day out, and you get to say "yes this is what I want to do the rest of my life" or "no, it's not really what I want to do the rest of my life," so you get an opportunity to make a change without a lot of investment into it.
After they graduated, most of the time they have a job already there and they don't have to do anything.At the companies interviewed, with the exception of one with a general hiring freeze, between 60 to 90% of the co-ops are offered full-time employment upon graduation. As one of the coordinators stated,
One of the worst things in the world to do is to go out and look for a job. I mean you get to go out and pour your soul out to somebody you don't even know and get to beg them for work. Twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five percent of the time you worked at a company and they say "why don't you come to work for me." The job is sitting there waiting for you. You don't have to go out and look for a job.Even if students do not get a job with the firm for which they co-oped, the work experience is valuable to their efforts to find other work--particularly given the importance of experience as a job qualification in the sub-baccalaureate labor market. As one co-op coordinator declared,
Another strong reason [for co-op] is it will enhance your résumé. . . . A co-op student, even if they do entry-level work, can say "I went to work in a company just like yours. I went at seven thirty in the morning and I left at five o'clock in the afternoon. I did the bookkeeping or I did the computer work or I did the chef work. I saw what the other people in the organization have done. I know that if I'm a chef student, that the time between November 1st and January 15th is like a zoo. I know for accounting people it gets crazy after the first of the year. I know how busy landscape horticulture is in June and I know the long hours it takes and the hard work it takes." Now the employer is going to be able to look at that student and say, "he may not know exactly what my company is about, but he or she knows what it takes to get the job done." . . . So instead of getting just theoretical work that a student gets in a classroom, and some lab work that a student gets in a classroom, they have some practical experience. So instead of just opening the door of opportunity a little bit, you open it much further. And we've seen associate students win over baccalaureate students because they have the practical experience that the baccalaureate student doesn't have.For the same reasons, co-op experience puts students in the nursing program at CTC ahead of other nursing graduates who have had only clinical experiences:
Well, the fact that they can have real live work experience in their résumé, maybe even some experience in a specialty area, gives them an advantage. I had two students from the group that just graduated that have been hired into Christ Hospital's intensive care training area, which would not have been possible for any other kind of a new grad. I've had two of them go directly in ORs based on the training that they received in their co-op experience. So it certainly gives them an advantage in the job market above other new graduates who don't have that.For many students, then, a co-op program is a direct way into employment, smoothing the transition from school to work precisely as the school-to-work programs envision. But an equally valuable aspect for some students is finding out what they don't want to do. One employer after another, as well as co-op coordinators at the schools, emphasized the point that students benefit greatly through co-op even if what they learn is that they are in the wrong field. As one coordinator stated, "They haven't spent five years in engineering school to wake up one day to find out they don't like the work." One manager echoed this sentiment:
It's a real life application of their academic work. It enhances what they do in the classroom and it helps them really affirm and confirm that they want to be in that area of work. . . . I interviewed a co-op last week for an engineering job; he was an electrical engineer, one of them from UC. He was going to work in the lab here. It's out in the shop, it's dirty, it's a place where you wear blue jeans because you're going to have to walk out and look at the machines. It was really obvious to me as soon as he walked out there he cringed. And in fact he said "I've never been in this kind of an environment." And I said "do you think you'd be comfortable here?" And of course he said "oh yes," because he was looking for a job. But the body language was "oh no." I think he felt uncomfortable that his shoes were touching the floor. But that's fine. And in the same round of co-ops we had another guy who I thought was going to pull off his suit coat and get to work. He just loved it and had worked in a similar environment as a summer job when he was in high school. So he was real comfortable with it. But students need to know that. That doesn't make the fellow who doesn't want to work in the dirty environment a bad guy. He just needs to find his right niche.Wherein guidance and counseling is often inadequate at this educational level, the co-op programs in Cincinnati provide information about work in an experience-based form that makes it all the more real, that provides students a better sense of the world of work and the nature of jobs available.
You get paid to do it. If you're a co-op student and you're smart enough not to go out and buy a brand new automobile or a new apartment or new clothes or whatever, if you're smart enough to take that check you get every two weeks and reinvest it in your education, when you graduate from CTC or you graduate from whatever institution, you don't have that big bill. So when you start getting more dollars than six, seven, eight, nine dollars an hour, you get to invest it in the new car or the new apartment. And I think that's a real plus for a young student not to have to face those bills when they're done.Another coordinator stressed that earning money is a special benefit to poorer students:
They're given a tremendous opportunity to pay for their education. We think for an indigent student, if they could get a loan for the first year, the chances of them being able to pay off the rest of their education, cooperative education is excellent. We don't tout that so much because students do with their money whatever they want to do with it. You do pay taxes out of co-op income. Really we'd like to work with the government in that regard too in some ways. We haven't made any inroads. But they normally can save enough money for college. Many save enough money for both college and living expenses.According to one of the students interviewed, covering college costs has been an additional benefit to her participation:
For me, another benefit is that I pay for all my college tuition. So this is a way for me to finance my tuition. Every other quarter I work full-time, otherwise I would be up to my ears in loans. So there are lots of benefits, foremost being experience and exposure, but the money and making contacts, you can't get that just by going to school every quarter.
Well, first of all it's cost effective and it truly is. People don't realize that. They don't necessarily have to come work with us. It's still cost effective because of the work and the skill level that's being applied. It avoids the hiring mistakes for us because you know you've got two years and you really do know an awful lot about the student. The student knows about us and it's so costly to make hiring mistakes. So we feel that is one of the major benefits. I did a small study--there is a greater retention rate of the former co-op versus a new hire . . . And so we only hire our co-ops and I can see the difference, just outstanding young people. It also gives us the competitive edge in recruiting--that we identify these people early on, especially minorities and females. We're going to identify them in their freshmen, early sophomore year and not wait. They're not going to be there when they're seniors and companies are recruiting on campus.
One of the overriding themes among employers was the notion of "growing one's own employees." All of the employers interviewed look at their co-ops first for permanent hires, provided the student has completed the program. As one representative summed it up,
It's an opportunity to grow new people into the business. I see that as probably the biggest benefit.Another representative said that her company relies heavily on hiring co-ops because it is impossible to learn skills specific to their company in school.
For us it's ideal. We manufacture conveyors. An engineering student coming out of a two- or four-year degree program is not going to be exposed to how conveyors work or how to design conveyors. Even an engineer with many years of experience can't just jump in to a job. . . . We bring a student in and we put them to real work. I've had people with associate degrees come right out and they are design-level engineers, sharp and ready to roll and yes, we'd automatically love to have them, to extend an offer and hire them in full-time.The idea of grooming employees was echoed by many employers. They emphasized that the considerable investment on both their part and that of the student is rewarded when the match is made:
Currently on staff, probably a third of the people we have come through the session [the co-op program]. Generally, if we work with a co-op all the way through, we hope there's an opportunity for him when he's done because we've invested a lot in him. He's invested a lot in us and we also have a good look at each other. So if we've got an opportunity, we try to bring co-ops on full-time.At many firms, the personnel representative stressed that co-ops are an excellent source for recruiting full-time workers:
We tell co-op students we're not hiring you because we're nice people and we're good corporate citizens and all of that. We're hiring you because we want people coming out of this program to become future employees. And we want work done in the interim. They come in and they do productive work. They earn their work. And the biggest thing is that it's a tremendous, tremendous recruiting tool and it's probably the best that you've got because you're not going on, well, I think they'll be a hard worker or I think they'll be able to learn and adjust. You know because they've been there. As long as the experiences that they get as a co-op are close enough to what they're going to be doing. So my dream is never to have to hire anybody anymore. My dream is to go out and help the schools recruit students so they can put them in our co-op program and when they get out we hire them full-time.Another company, which has been involved with cooperative education since its inception, has the goal of offering every co-op student a job at graduation. As the representative stated,
Our co-ops and interns are hired permanently once they graduate, providing that we have the opening and they've done a good job. I don't have a percentage (of how many actually are hired) to share with you. It's not as high recently because of [the decline of] aerospace. We did have some layoffs in aerospace. When we laid off, we have a commitment: We will never lay off a co-op and it's just something we started. It's a tradition; we'll never do it. So what we did was, we displaced them into other areas of the company and they were not hired on because they obviously didn't want that. It wasn't the right fit, so our statistics for the past six, seven years have been very much down.One small company said that they use the co-op program as a form of recruitment: They cannot compete with the larger companies' pay rates, but they can provide students opportunities to gain experience that they would be unable to obtain from other firms. In their pitch to students, they stress,
You're not going to stand in the blue print room and make copies all day. We're going to teach you how to be an engineer or be a designer. You're going to get some hands-on experience.
Most employers were adamant that real work was being performed. One employer admitted that the co-op program was a cheap form of labor:
In fact for us, and I guess this is a rather crude way of putting it, it's an inexpensive way for us to get very good help. If we had to hire from the outside . . . it costs three times the amount to subcontract.When asked if co-ops were costly, one employer replied,
No, because they perform work. They do perform legitimate work and it's not busy work. It's work that if they didn't do it, we'd have to hire somebody in to do it.Another employer commented on the benefit of having a cyclical employee:
For us, it is a very cost-effective way, plus if they keep coming back, we already have knowledge invested in this person.Both employers and educators stressed that co-op students are more motivated than other potential employees. As the Sinclair brochure claims,
Cooperative education is the bridge between the classroom and the workplace. Co-op students offer dedication and enthusiasm as well as a commitment to growth in a chosen career field.Employers often remarked that hiring students for short-term work was more beneficial than hiring someone off the street. With a student, they knew there was a commitment to learn and to continue in that field. Numerous employers also mentioned the added benefit of having young, enthusiastic workers around:
The youthful ideas, I think, are neat for us. They show a lot of initiative and a lot of creativity. . . . Our people get an extreme benefit from showing someone their trade and how to do it. And you get people who want to work. There is a component in the business of having youth involved that brings a vitality to the organization. And some of it is stupid, blind enthusiasm; it's nice to be around [that] once in a while.Another employer emphasized that co-ops were more than cheap labor:
On paper, the co-op is probably $5/hour cheaper to hire. They bring in much more than temporary help do in their eagerness and flexibility.This point was echoed by other employers who liked the freshness of students working with their permanent employees. Many thought that it rejuvenated older workers, and that the opportunity to "teach" others was good for all involved. In addition, the students are monitored by school officials, like co-op coordinators, while on their work-based assignments. The coordinators typically make one or two site visits to the employer in order to check on the student, and are available to handle any disciplinary matters that the employer wants assistance with.
Offering strong co-op programs also adds to an institution's distinctiveness. The college representatives were aware of this marketing factor:
It makes us unique. I think it validates what we do. I think it would be real hard to teach a history course at the University of Cincinnati and never know whether your students use it or not. But for us we get to see upfront whether what we're teaching the kids is working or not working.The colleges claimed very high placement rates for their graduates, which they attributed to the co-op program. One of the employers felt the schools' recruitment efforts are enhanced by the existence of co-op:
They are able to recruit students who understand that they'll get a job at the end of their college experience versus how many college students are out there, particularly when the economy is like it is right now, how many are out there flipping hamburgers or whatever it takes.
Well, if it hasn't been too obvious, I guess it's from my own personal standpoint, I think it's [co-op] the greatest thing since sliced bread . . . But the key thing and I think it's come through, but the key thing is the developing of the partnerships. It's just like a relationship with a position. If you only go once every twelve years, you may not know the history and how things are developed and you may want to start out with the physical and different things like that. But we strive for developing partnerships. And partnerships mean, you need some help, call us, we'll see what we can do. We need some help, we'll call you, type of thing.The schools agreed:
It keep us in touch with industry. We have six people here on the payroll not counting me that spend all their time out in industry. We knew when [a particular company] was about to downsize because of what we heard on the streets and what we heard sitting in people's offices.An employer stated additional benefits to educational institutions of their relationship:
Well, they have an opportunity, with us anyway, to get more involved and find out what we're doing. In the middle of August we have a team coming down to [one of the plants] to meet with our supervisors . . . The deans are coming and they get to sit there with the supervisors and say, you know, "what should we be doing?" This is what we need. So more interaction. Also they're going to learn some state-of-the-art technology
To the colleges, I think the number one [benefit] is that they can come into the company and see what we are doing and they can keep up with it. And keep their college at the leading edge of the universities in the selection that the students make as to where they want to pursue an education. I think, too, the professors, it has helped them. But I think the professors, just from my experience, tend to not be as realistic as to what the real world is all about. When I went to school and graduated from my undergraduate degree, they filled my head with, you'll get this wonderful job. They fill the students with ideas that are not true and that don't happen. And I think this has given them, from the students I see today, they are more realistic than I was. I think the professors have come down a little bit off of their, those that are involved in the co-op program, off of their idealistic pedestal, if you will. I think that's a definite plus.Perhaps the most dramatic benefit to the colleges involved in co-op is eliminating the gulf between their institutions and the employers who will hire their students. In Cincinnati, employers are almost uniformly knowledgeable about local education providers, and generally supportive of them. In contrast, in other local labor markets, employers are generally unfamiliar with local schools and colleges, and often dismissive of their quality (Grubb, 1996; Grubb et al., 1992; Useem, 1986). There are, to be sure, exceptions in occupational areas (like engineering) where employers have set up special working relations with specific departments, and in some occupational areas like health where licensing requirements force employers and providers to interact routinely. In all these cases, the crucial difference between knowledge and ignorance, support and hostility, is the regular contact between employers and providers, focusing on a task--the education of well-prepared students--that benefits employers and educators alike. While there are other ways to increase this kind of contact, co-op programs as they have been practiced in Cincinnati are some of the best ways to enhance such contact.
One distinguishing feature is that the sub-baccalaureate labor market is almost entirely local. In their search for employees, firms generally advertise locally; if they establish relations with any education providers, they do so with community colleges or area vocational schools within the same community. Community colleges, technical institutes, and area vocational schools target local employers as well, and deans and instructors report that students search for employment almost exclusively within the local community. The only exceptions appeared in cases of highly specialized skills (like those involved in the production of lasers), or in a very few cases where employers (usually large firms) have established good working relations with distant community colleges.
One obvious consequence is that the local relationship between employers and educational institutions is crucial: If students cannot find employment related to their education within the community, they are unlikely to benefit from their education by moving elsewhere. For several reasons, however, this relationship is often quite weak. For example, the ways in which community colleges might establish better working relationships with employers are often quite ineffective. In many cases, advisory committees meet infrequently and provide very little information to educators. Many placement offices are understaffed, and concentrate on part-time "stay-in-school" jobs rather than linking occupational programs with employers. Placement by individual instructors does take place, but is sporadic and uneven. Student follow-up and tracking mechanisms, which can provide information to assess the strengths and weaknesses of occupational programs, are poorly developed in most institutions, so that most instructors and administrators have no idea where their students go. And while licensing requirements help establish congruence between employers and providers, they are quite rare outside of health occupations.
However, co-op programs provide the kind of regular interaction between education providers and employers that contribute to stronger ties. In striking contrast to some other labor markets, where employers are generally unfamiliar with local schools and colleges, virtually every employer in Cincinnati was knowledgeable both about the co-op programs and about the educational institutions in the community.[24]
Employers in Cincinnati commented on the local character of searching for and hiring new employees. Indeed, some chose co-op students from two-year rather than four-year programs for this reason. Employers also mentioned the local angle of working with local programs out of loyalty to the institutions:
We try to stay local if we can because of our allegiance to UC. In fact, a lot of our model shop employees are all graduates of UC and CTC. So we try to keep our loyalties here.A second characteristic of sub-baccalaureate labor markets is that virtually all employers look for experience when hiring--particularly for highly job-specific experience. Much more than formal schooling, experience is an indicator of the skills which employers value: mastery of specific machines, production processes, or office procedures; motivation and persistence; and the ability to work with others. Over and over again, employers we interviewed insisted on the importance of experience over formal education--even for relatively low-level positions like accounting clerks. The human resource manager for a moderate-sized tool and die company described their hiring in the following way:
When people come out of [the local community college and area vocational schools], they still truly have [only] the basics. We would consider that to be entry-level, between $6.00 and $7.50 an hour. That is what we would normally pay someone that was just coming out of a vocational school or out of [the local community college] with little or no experience. Because truly in those areas, the experience is really the key. You can't truly learn everything there is to know in the classroom in order to excel and climb up the ladder.Even where there is some recognition of the value of schooling, there remains some ambivalence about formal education--linked to the need for highly specific skills which are too narrow to find in any educational institution. For example, the personnel manager of a firm that produces box-forming machines reported,
I have specifically told [the engineering manager] that I do not want anyone any longer whom we have to train. I want somebody who has some background and work experience if possible. You can have a super education, [but] if they don't have anything in our line of products, it's worthless. It's start from square one.In most firms, therefore, it is difficult to compensate for a lack of experience with sub-baccalaureate credentials. The strong preference for individuals with experience creates a problem for new entrants into the sub-baccalaureate labor market: If every employer requires experience, it becomes difficult to enter the labor market and accumulate this experience. As one employer acknowledged, "My feeling is that entry level is tough: They really don't have any place to go unless there's a tremendous shortage."
However, the problem of young students and new entrants to the sub-baccalaureate labor market lacking experience is automatically solved with co-op programs. By definition, students have some relatively stable employment, with a single employer over a two-year period, by the time they complete a program. A personnel manager for a prominent machine-tool company described the advantage to both the student and the firm:
[Co-op students] have at least some experience and they know the application of what they're learning. . . . Once they graduate, we have a tendency to hire those people. So then, when they're competing [with other applicants], they're competing with other people who have two-year or college degrees, but they have some hands-on experience in the company.The providers of education in the Cincinnati area were equally aware of the importance of experience. As one co-op coordinator acknowledged,
The most important thing is that because it is a two-year school, that two years of education really just gets them started educationally on a career. And a lot of employers wouldn't be able to capitalize on just that education if the students hadn't had some hands-on experience besides the labs. We've got about a 60/40 mix of lab and theory, in favor of theory by the way. And so the lab work is not enough to make a typical student credible on the job market. So cooperative education experience definitely helps.Another advantage to experience as a hiring standard is that it help employers screen potential employees for certain behavioral capacities like motivation and persistence--capacities that are not well-measured by formal schooling. But like experience, co-op allows the firm to observe the individual and to learn about the personal capacities--motivation, diligence, interpersonal skills, and the like--that are so crucial to employment. As the director of technology transfer for a technical institute mentioned,
First of all, it's a screening test for them to see, "Do I even want to hire this guy?" I know their work ethic; I know their work habits.Another personnel director commented,
At least half of [my company's] motivation [for participating in the co-op program] is to have these people whom we've been able to watch, we've been able to train--and upon their graduation we've got full-time employees.Thus, co-op provides information about students that formal schooling does not--a particular advantage in the sub-baccalaureate labor market because of the use of experience as a hiring standard and the importance of personal characteristics that are best observed on the job.
[23] It has been difficult to find statistical evidence of the effectiveness of co-op education; see, for example, Stern, Finkelstein, Urquiloa, and Cagampang (forthcoming). A recent review of the earnings effects by Somers (1994) found most studies to be poorly controlled, and that many of the studies found co-op to have no effect on earnings; one of the best-controlled studies, of graduates from Michigan State engineering programs, found an effect on earnings of only 1.9%. All of the studies cited were from four-year colleges, however, and most of them examined earnings directly after college. Wessels and Pumphrey (1995) reviewed a number of studies finding little influence of co-op on the length of initial job search and advancement. They then examined the employment of graduates of community colleges in the North Carolina system and found that individuals placed with their co-op employers have a reduced search time for their first job, and that co-op graduates report more job advancements, suggesting that the benefits of co-op may emerge only after a number of years. The students from these community college co-op programs are also more likely to report that employers are making use of the skills they learned in college. Overall, however, the empirical literature that exists is quite mixed in its support for the effects of co-op.
[24] The other local labor markets we examined included Fresno, Sacramento, and the Silicon Valley/San Jose area (also analyzed by Useem, 1986). Of course, this was not a census of local labor markets, so there may be others with close working relationships between employers and education providers. However, the weak ties between the two are structural, rooted in the differences between the kinds of institutions that firms are and the characteristics of educational institutions. It, therefore, requires substantial effort--of the kind that co-op programs represent--to bridge this gap.