CONCLUSIONS:
THE IMPLICATIONS OF CINCINNATI FOR SCHOOL-TO-WORK

However, the real value of examining co-op programs in Cincinnati is not to learn once again about the benefits of co-op and work-based approaches, but to understand the special conditions that have contributed to an enduring and widespread set of programs in Cincinnati, as well as the problems that remain despite the prevalence of co-op. To be sure, the applications of the Cincinnati experience--which is one dominated by postsecondary institutions--to school-to-work programs that have emphasized secondary schools is somewhat difficult. Many efforts in high schools--for example in short-term job shadowing and internships--are likely to be less intensive than full-blown co-op placements, and high school students are obviously less well-prepared and therefore less suitable as well-qualified workers than are postsecondary students. But the high school programs that intend to move students into substantial forms of work-based learning will encounter all the problems that any postsecondary programs faces, including the recruitment of employers, the selection of students, the maintenance of some consistency between school-based and work-based components, and quality assurance. The levels of the educational system may differ, but the issues are relatively constant.

Even if the conditions that have fostered co-op education in Cincinnati are unique, there are at least three implications for school-to-work programs from examining Cincinnati programs:

1. The support of employers. Employers in Cincinnati support co-op wholeheartedly, both in the sense of providing placements and other forms of financial help to colleges and in the moral support they provide for close working relationships with education providers. In a community where the value of work-based education has come to be understood, there is little need for repeatedly making the case and persuading employers of their duty to participate--since self-interest rather than duty is the principal incentive.

   At the same time, two problems remain. One is that, roughly speaking, employers participate for either of two very different reasons. Those who are trying to "grow their own" employees, in a school-based and work-based education program tailored to their particular requirements, are typically larger firms, able to rotate co-op students around different placements, and generous with supportive services like internal seminars so that students can learn about "all phases of the business"; they consistently articulate an educational motive--of wanting to educate students broadly and deeply. These programs also tend to use the alternating model, and are almost surely the best placements. But other firms--typically smaller, probably less profitable--view co-op as a source of relatively well-trained, well-screened (by the college) short-term labor;[25] in these cases, students tend not to rotate among a number of placements, there tend to be fewer supportive services, and the firm rather than the student is the principal beneficiary. Additionally, the dominant model is the parallel approach, one that can be very similar to much more informal work experience programs, or even casual afternoon employment. Co-op coordinators claim that there are benefits to both kinds of co-op programs, and the value of experience in the sub-baccalaureate labor market cannot be underestimated. However, the value to students of placements justified as productive labor is more questionable because the motives of employers are not as clearly educational.[26] For school-to-work programs, it is important to recognize the division in motives and structure, and to encourage as much as possible the "grow your own" approach to work-based education.

   In addition, finding enough co-op placements remains a struggle, even in Cincinnati. The difficulties in amassing enough placements for all students as the term approaches, in getting placements in small firms (which dominate some labor markets), and in finding placements in cyclical downturns when firms are laying off workers were cited by a number of co-op coordinators. Colleges have tried many tactics to avoid these problems, especially the attempt to develop "portfolios" of many employers of varying sizes and in different sectors so they are less vulnerable to cyclical declines in one sector, or the fortunes of a particular large company. But even in a community where work-based education has become widespread and where employers participate willingly, there is always excess demands for placements.

2. The "high-quality equilibrium." The quality of the co-op programs in Cincinnati is important to their persistence. Colleges screen their students so that they send only those who are academically well-prepared and committed to their postsecondary education; in addition, they often screen on behalf of employers for motivation, persistence, and other personal qualities. For their part, employers try to provide placements of high quality, knowing that the applicant pool will dwindle if placements are routine and unrewarding; and most have their own screening mechanisms, particularly for the personal qualities--eagerness and enthusiasm, the ability to work with others, dependability and stability, and well-roundedness--that they value more than either grades or specific technical skills. The maintenance of high quality by both educators and employers has prevented the Cincinnati programs from falling into a "low-quality equilibrium," as has happened to other work experience and job training programs. A high-quality equilibrium is also an antidote to the negative perceptions of program quality that the U.S. General Accounting Office (1991) identified as a barrier to school-to-work programs.[27]

   In Cincinnati, the high-quality equilibrium has been established not through skill standards, certificates of mastery, complex agreements with employers, or other similar accountability mechanisms.[28] Instead, clear expectations on the part of employers and educators alike, established in face-to-face contact and constant discussion between co-op coordinators and employer representatives (often from personnel or human resource departments), appear to be the most common mechanisms of establishing and enforcing the high-quality equilibrium. Indeed, it is tempting to argue that these personal connections are crucial to the close working relationships between educators and employers that distinguish the Cincinnati labor market from others: It may be that impersonal and bureaucratic forms of control like skill standards actually impede close working relationships. For school-to-work programs, these findings suggest that the rhetoric around skill standards should be moderated, since they may not accomplish what their advocates claim. However, efforts to develop "high-quality equilibria" in fledgling programs should continue, particularly by establishing close working relationships between education providers and employers.

   The flip side of the "high-quality equilibrium" is, at least potentially, the issue of equitable access. The screening measures used in establishing programs of high quality have been designed to eliminate individuals with deficiencies in basic academic skills; with poor academic performance; with casual or part-time attendance and low commitment to postsecondary education; and with poor attitudes, persistence, and motivation. Almost inevitably, these screens must have eliminated many of the nontraditional students who enter community colleges, including those with mediocre academic records and "experimenters" unsure of their goals in postsecondary education--though all of the colleges developed various remedial or "pre-tech" programs to allow such students to overcome such problems. But these efforts all took place prior to enrollment in co-op because the high-quality equilibrium will fall apart if the performance of students on the job is deficient.

   This finding suggests that school-to-work programs should provide any remediation necessary, affirmative action recruitment to enroll more minority students, or sex equity efforts to get more women into traditionally-male occupations, within the school-based component prior to work-based placement--and should also use the benefits of work-based placements as a motivation to get lackadaisical or uncommitted students to change their ways. But to apply remedial efforts or affirmative action at the stage when students are already on the job will inevitably erode the support of employers, and undermine the high-quality equilibrium.

3. Institutionalizing support for work-based education. The Cincinnati co-op programs have persisted without any obvious bureaucratic mechanism to keep them going: there is no central clearinghouse, or Chamber of Commerce office, or state-funded bureau in charge of co-ops.[29] Instead, their persistence seems to be due to three interrelated factors. First, the state of Ohio supports co-op through its regular program of state aid to community colleges, since students during their work placements are still counted as enrolled. This steady financial support--obtained through regular funding channels, not through special-purpose state or federal grants that are subject to the whims of funding cycles and appropriations, as federal school-to-work funds will be--has been critical to the stability of co-op programs, and it is clear that the cessation of state funding would end these programs as well. Second, the co-op coordinators in community colleges, funded through state aid, are absolutely crucial in every way: they recruit employers, maintain as much continuity as possible over time, screen students, establish links with faculty, promote co-ops within their own institutions, and generally provide the institutional "glue" that holds co-op programs together.[30] Third, within educational institutions, the fact that co-ops are required (in OCAS and CTC) and widespread (in Sinclair, where co-ops are voluntary) means that they are accepted among students as routine; even better, students have come to understand the additional benefits of work-based education, so that there is no need to recruit reluctant students. Finally, the employer community seems to rely on the history of co-op--since many managers and workers were themselves co-op students--and general acceptance of the benefits of co-ops, a culture which is spread around employers quite informally.

   For those individuals (like us) who expect to see innovative practices institutionalized through bureaucratic authority and enforcement mechanisms like skill standards, the lack of such practices in Cincinnati is a genuine puzzle. However, a different interpretation is that--in sharp contrast to the common German practice, which is to wrap all practices in layers of bureaucratic mandates and institutional requirements--one might interpret the Cincinnati experience as a particularly American form of work-based education, embedded in voluntary relationships without rules and regulations.[31] The implications for fledgling school-to-work programs are not especially clear, unfortunately, since innovations almost surely require more support than do ongoing practices, and the efforts to develop high-quality school-to-work programs may require some external pressures to prevent low-quality programs from developing. But the Cincinnati experience clarifies, we think, that an informal culture of expectations around work-based learning may be more powerful in the long run than special funding subject to political whims and bureaucratic requirements resisted by the American preference for laissez faire.

But this observation returns us to our starting point--the ambiguity about whether preparation for employment should best be carried out in educational institutions, at work, or through a combination of both. The threat of the pressure for a greater emphasis on transfer and on "academic" education is one of several forces that has persistently undermined occupationally oriented schooling and work-based education. The vision and promise of school-to-work programs are that a combination is more powerful than either component alone. The greatest lesson of the Cincinnati experience is that this vision can be achieved under the right conditions--the commitment to occupational preparation by educational institutions; a stable funding source, particularly for co-op coordinators; a parallel commitment by employers, particularly when they appreciate the educational value of work placements in "grow your own" programs; a high-quality equilibrium sustained by the commitment of each side to high quality; and a consistency between the school- and work-based components created by constant interaction between educators and employers. Under these conditions, a uniquely American form of school-to-work programs has evolved in Cincinnati--and by implication can develop elsewhere.

[25] A difficult question that merits further examination is whether employers sometimes use co-op students as an alternative to permanent employees--much as they are now moving to temporary or contingent labor as a way of avoiding paying benefits and hiring and firing over the business cycle. None of the employers or educators mentioned this possibility, however.

[26] An obvious but difficult research task would be to ascertain the long-run employment benefits of these two types of co-op or school-to-work programs--assuming that the two could be differentiated in the first place.

[27] While the GAO report concentrated on high school programs, these barriers are discussed in the literature on college co-op as well (Harsher et al., 1987).

[28] In asking employers about what state and federal policies could advance work-based education, we consistently probed about the value of skill standards. While it is impossible to prove that such mechanisms would not be useful from the responses of individuals who don't use them, the lack of support for skill standards and certificates of mastery (or other credentials aside from the associate degree) was uniform and striking.

[29] The lack of any visible form of institutionalization was one of the most surprising aspects of Cincinnati's co-op programs. We asked persistently about mechanisms of institutional or bureaucratic control at a level larger than any one college or company, but were unable to find any.

[30] However, they appear to work independently of one another; that is, there is no regional organization of co-op coordinators or those committed to co-op education, to share practices or promote co-op in a wider sense.

[31] Indeed, it may be that even the rule-bound German system is more dependent on unstated cultural norms than most of us realized. As David Finegold (1995) concluded about the German model, "It is not possible to transplant this system--which evolved from the medieval craft guilds, and thus grounded in a long tradition of respect and reward for skilled, manual careers--without the deep structural and cultural roots that support it" (p. 5).

[32] In postsecondary institutions, there has been a constant process of "institutional drift" in which area vocational schools initially devoted to secondary and postsecondary students, evolve into technical institutes offering certificate and associate degrees, and then become comprehensive community colleges by adding academic degrees. The most recent stage in this "drift" is the attempt by some community colleges to become baccalaureate-granting institutions by grafting another two years onto their programs. "Institutional drift" is testimony to the status of academic over vocational goals and of the baccalaureate degree over sub-baccalaureate credentials.