An Employer's Evaluation of Cooperative Education

Cooperative education differs from other forms of engineering education in that a third party has been introduced. In addition to students and faculty, we now have employers. From personal encounters with co-op students in the employ of a major consulting firm, four basic conclusions are made; (1) Cooperative engineering students have generally been very satisfactory short-term employees and superior employees after graduation; (2) cooperative education brings together engineers in practice with those in education; (3) the best co-op employment program must often be a compromise between routine duties and more interesting assignments and (4) further improvements in cooperative education could be made through better communications and cooperation among employers, educators, and students.