Cooperative Education - A Study of Employment Cost Effectiveness, 1992 Engineering Conference Proceedings

In 1991 the number of engineering college graduates represented the lowest total in a decade -- 63,446 earned a B.S. degree, down 3% from the previous year. Engineers will continue to be in short supply, yet some 440,000 new engineering opportunities are forecasted in the 1990’s.

Corporations must develop an immediate strategy to ensure they will have the technical resources available to enter the 21st Century. Cooperative Education can and should be considered as a prime source of professional personnel -- it makes good business sense. Cooperative education students are productive, they enhance college recruiting and can be cost effective.

A joint study by The Mead Corporation and the University of Cincinnati centered on the hiring of engineering co-ops. They were selected for two reasons: 1) engineering co-ops normally take longer to be productive than other majors and, therefore, would be the most costly and 2) the 1990’s will produce fewer engineering graduates, leaving a gap in the engineering work which needs to be done.