UC's cooperative education program continues to grow

The Cincinnati Business Courier reports that not even COVID-19 can permanently disrupt the steady growth of the University of Cincinnati's cooperative education program.

UC's co-op program, the creation of Dean Herman Schenider in 1906, was the first of its kind and consistently remains one of the Top 5 programs in the country. 

In the 2023-24 academic year, more than 8,300 students earned an estimated $88.8 million collectively through paid co-op experiences, according to self-reported data. That averages to nearly $10,700 per student per semester.

It’s an 18% increase in wages from the last reported co-op data.

In 2018, UC President Neville Pinto, PhD, told the Business Courier that he planned to double the number of students participating in cooperative education within the next 10 years. The pandemic impacted that goal.

“Employers were not hiring as rapidly during that time and some of the infrastructure plans that we had in place took a little bit longer," said Michelle Clare, the dean of the College of Cooperative Education and Professional Studies at UC. 

Those plans included the launch of nine new co-op majors in the College of Arts and Sciences.

“We pride ourselves on experiential learning,” Clare said. “Basically, any student you see is going to participate in some sort of experience that’s directly related to what they want to do in the future.”

“We still have ambitious growth goals, and I think we’re still working toward that,” she added. “Nationally, higher education is not necessarily looking at a landscape that’s going to be full of growth, but the co-op program helps make us very competitive in a market that I think is going to be tighter.”

Read the full Business Courier article.

Featured photo of Andrew Matthews, a student in UC’s College of Engineering and Applied Science who works on co-op at Turner Construction, and Jalyn Stewart, a 2022 engineering graduate who also did her co-op rotations at Turner before joining the company full time. Credit/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand.