By VICTOR ANJOS
From Canada to India to the U.S. and beyond, employers are investing in co-operative education programs to train and ultimately hire students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.
Co-op education is a three-way partnership between a university, an employer and a student. A co-op job is like a paid internship, where students earn a salary as they work with professionals in their fields of study. Some are then hired by their co-op employers.
The University of Waterloo in Canada embraced co-operative education 60 years ago, combining academic studies with work experience to aid aspiring engineers. In the 2000s, Waterloo partnered with what is now called Blackberry Limited, formerly Research in Motion, maker of the Blackberry device, to hire and train students in hopes they would become employees after graduation.
“With its blend of higher learning and real-world practice, co-op education has become a proven way to prepare students for a changing world and challenges growing ever more complex,” said Dave McKay, president and CEO of financial services institution Royal Bank of Canada, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario.
McKay, an alumnus of the University of Waterloo’s computer science co-op program, proposed a national goal to ensure that 100 percent of Canadian undergraduate students are exposed to experiential learning before they graduate. “The business world is increasingly cross-disciplinary; education needs to be, too,” he told the Universities Canada Governing Council Chamber in April 2016.
High level Benefits
Real-world experience
A co-op can be great opportunities as they can give you real experience of what an actual workplace is like. If you’re aware of the exact career path you want to go down, co-ops will give you a great insight into whether or not the industry is for you.
Transferable skills
On your co-op program, you won’t be just making the coffee, your organization will expect you to get involved just like a real employee. Work hard and you’ll be able to add these skills to your résumé and impress future employers with your wide knowledge and skills. A list of co-ops on your résumé will make you stand out from the competition.
Good contacts
By immersing yourself into the world of work while studying means you’re creating the opportunity to widen your industry contacts as much as possible. This is great if you know a particular sector or company is right for you and you have secured contacts in the field as this could be your route into your dream career.
Even if you don’t make use of these contacts directly, you can still utilize them as references for other future employment. Surveys have found that employers of graduates across most sectors value co-op experience highly.
Professional references a lot more valued by employers than personal ones.
Job Offer
If you exceed the expectations of your co-op employer, you could be asked to stay on permanently, either once your studies have completed or immediately. This is the outcome that many students hope for when undertaking co-ops. However, don’t be disheartened if this isn’t the end result of you, there will be another job out there for you, so keep working hard!
Waterloo: Canada’s Tech Hub
Experiential Learning a Global Phenomenon
Beyond Canada, many other countries around the world are blending work and learning.
At Drexel University in Philadelphia, students in a co-op program test-drive their careers at Amazon and Google and are exposed to the best minds, said Peter Franks, Drexel’s vice provost for career education. After working at these companies while they study, “they come back to the classroom more mature, confident and knowledgeable with new skills and innovations.”
In India, these programs have helped impoverished students who have few education options to earn degrees in science.
In Hyderabad, India, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd., an Indian multinational pharmaceutical company, believes education is key to retention. For more than 10 years, the $2.5 billion company with offices in 30 countries has hired college freshman from poor villages—where an advanced education is virtually unheard of—to work and learn as they earn science degrees.
“We train them in the skills of pharmaceutical manufacturing,” said S. Chandrasekhar, Dr. Reddy’s president and global head of HR, during an interview with SHRM Online in Hyderabad in April. “We provide them with an undergrad degree by funding their education, and we ensure that they earn while they learn.”
Dr. Reddy’s partners with three universities and provides employees with housing in college dorms. Within three years, “we immerse them in the company’s culture, and [by the time they graduate], we’ve made them job ready and culture ready. There is a 96 percent retention rate for the first five years, and 95 percent stay with us,” he said.
He added that most are hired from small, rural villages. “They are not the rich kids,” Chandrasekhar said. “This program has a social cause. We are trying to uplift the lives of poor people who cannot afford higher education or good jobs. This is life-altering for these people.”
Students graduate with a Bachelor of Science in pharmaceutical chemistry.
Benefits of Continuous Feedback
Co-op programs rely on feedback from employers and students to keep up with technological skills needed in the workplace and to assess a student’s capabilities, according to educators in Canada and the United States.
Co-op education is a fundamental part of the HR pipeline as it could lead to employment, explained Kettil Cedercreutz, Ph.D., associate provost and dean at the University of Cincinnati’s division of experience-based learning and career education. It, too, has a co-op program.
“The feedback cycle works,” Cedercreutz added. “Students will be vocal if the university teaches them the wrong software. This will lead to a dialogue to change the software. In turn, we will lose employers if the students don’t have the right skills. We need to know where industries are going to stay on the right track.”
“Co-op is considered a recruitment strategy,” said Norah McRae, Ph.D., University of Victoria’s executive director of co-operative education and career services in Victoria, British Columbia. “With [Victoria’s] aging population, we need new graduates to stay and work in the community. A co-op student hire is the equivalent of a four-month interview where both the employer and student can determine whether they have a future together.”
truly are the pinnacle of early career experience."
Structured (Private) Co-Op Programs
Now that we’ve seen, in the previous section, just how glorious being led by a Mentor may be like, which is what several data, AI and tech programs now try to do, 1000ml decided to go one step further. During our programs, a learner (or mentee) works through several Mentors in a 6-month incredibly intensive project-based learning program, servicing real clients and stakeholders.
So what do you do when all signs point to having to go to University to gain any sort of advantage? Unfortunately it’s the current state of affairs that most employers will not hire you unless you have a degree for even junior or starting jobs. Once you have that degree, coming to my Mentor Program, with 1000ml with our Patent Pending training system, the only such system in the world; is the only way to gain the practical knowledge and experience that will jump start your career.
Check out our next dates below for our upcoming seminars, labs and programs, we’d love to have you there.