This story was originally published by Reasons to be Cheerful
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education.
Every weekday morning for six months, instead of taking college classes, 25-year-old Tamari Natelauri made the 45-minute drive from Philadelphia to Voorhees Township, New Jersey, to go to work at a large accounting firm.
It’s her dream job — and she hasn’t even graduated from college yet.
By the time she walks across the stage at Drexel University’s commencement ceremony in 2027, Natelauri will have spent 11 years of her life — and a lot of money — on higher education, including seven years at the Community College of Philadelphia, working part-time toward an associate degree in business. She believes it will be worth it, because along with her bachelor’s degree, she will have a year and a half of accounting experience, a professional network, references and a clear idea of the career she wants to build for herself.
At Drexel, about 94 percent of students take at least one six-month break from classes to get a job — most are paid jobs — in their prospective career field, according to Ian Sladen, the university’s vice president for cooperative education and career development. These work experiences, known as co-ops, have been part of Drexel’s education model since 1919.
“I don’t think anyone’s going to the school and not thinking about their future and how the degree will benefit their future,” Natelauri said. “The co-op is an opportunity when you can try yourself in different industries and see which fits better.”
Confidence in higher education is slipping nationwide, in part because of the high cost of obtaining a degree and questions about whether it pays off in the workforce. Higher education experts say work-based learning programs like Drexel’s could be part of the solution: Students can pursue their academic studies while simultaneously experiencing how those studies might apply to the workforce and earning some money in the process.
“Having outstanding faculty, having outstanding laboratories and teaching facilities, having all of those things is necessary, but it really isn’t sufficient,” said Manny Contomanolis, the former president of the National Association of Colleges and Employers and now an associate dean at Harvard University. “Students, especially of today’s generation, love this idea of combining these different learning modalities and really getting the maximum return on their education.”
The appeal of such work-based learning programs is growing. Sladen said his office fields inquiries from other colleges about Drexel’s co-op program once or twice a week. Other universities are expanding their career counseling offices and partnering with businesses to shape coursework.
Yet co-op programs can be challenging for universities to operate. And at a time when many colleges are facing enrollment declines and a growing number are shutting their doors, Drexel’s program has not been enough to help it stave off severe financial challenges. Shortly after classes began this fall, the university announced that it had enrolled 500 fewer first-year students than expected, which it blamed in part on the botched rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as FAFSA. Facing an operating loss of $63 million, Drexel leaders said that they would reduce the university’s workforce including through buyouts and consolidating some schools and programs. Britt Faulstick, executive director of news and media relations at Drexel, said that the co-op program would not be affected.
Developed at the University of Cincinnati in 1906, the cooperative education model has long existed at a handful of universities including Northeastern, Rochester Institute of Technology and Georgia Institute of Technology as well as Drexel. Other universities offer smaller-scale versions of the co-op program, for example in certain colleges or departments. The model is also popular at universities in Canada and Mexico.
Running a co-op program requires significant time and resources, particularly to build relationships with employers. As a result, some schools offer more limited work opportunities or partner with a third-party company that already has employer connections.
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One such company, Riipen, enables employers to post projects ranging from 10 to 250 hours and matches students with them, as part of a class curriculum or as paid jobs. Students work directly with the employers to complete the project, receiving feedback and accumulating a list of skills and experience.
Dana Stephenson, one of Riipen’s co-founders, participated in three co-ops while majoring in business at the University of Victoria in Canada and said he started the company to give more students access to similar training.
“What we heard from so many students was, ‘If I could just get my foot in the door, if someone would just give me my first experience, then I could get my next experience,’” Stephenson said. “And of course, that’s what co-op is for.”
Natelauri, who immigrated to the United States from Tbilisi, Georgia, as a teenager, said she was intimidated by the cost of college and did everything she could to limit the loans she took out to pay for her education, including starting at community college and living with her parents.
She chose Drexel because of its reputation for getting students relevant work experience, and also because she could use the money she earned from her co-op jobs to help cover her tuition. Natelauri is among the roughly 25 percent of Drexel students who receive Pell grants (federal financial aid for students from low-income families).
Natelauri had some work experience by the time she got to Drexel — she’d worked as a cashier at a Rite Aid and still works part time as an administrative assistant in a dental office — but not all students do.
To make sure that students go into their co-ops with basic professional skills and a clear understanding of what it means to have a professional job, Drexel requires them to first pass a one-credit course called Co-op 101. Angela Brennan, who has been teaching the course for 13 years, said it covers what students need to know to apply for, interview for and keep a job.
Brennan leads them in exercises to help figure out what kind of job will best align with their skills, interests and values. Students also develop resumes and practice interview skills, including by conducting a recorded virtual job interview that she critiques at the end of the term. And they cover professional communications etiquette: how to send a professional email to your boss, for example, and how to fold and mail a physical document.
“They realize that we are not messing around. We do really nitpick every last comma,” Brennan said. “It’s not ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’: ‘There’s a co-op for you, and a co-op for you. And let’s give everybody a co-op!’”
After students pass the Co-op 101 course, an adviser in the university’s career center helps them look for jobs. Most find them through a Drexel website where employers post job openings, which can be located not just in Philadelphia but across the United States and even overseas. There are three rounds of hiring, and Natelauri said the first is considered the most competitive.
While the co-op program helps students get exposure to careers, it can also mean more time in school. Drexel students typically graduate in five years and participate in three separate co-ops (half a year during each of the last three years), or four years with one co-op. Roughly six percent of Drexel students opt out of the co-op program, Sladen said, because they want to earn their degree sooner.
To Natelauri’s surprise, 19 of the 30 companies she applied to in her first round invited her for an interview, a logistical challenge she worked with her adviser to navigate. The job at the accounting firm was one of her top choices, in part because the pay was $25 per hour.
About 85 percent of the co-ops are paid, Sladen said, at an average of $21 per hour.
Employers often use the co-op program as a talent pipeline, a chance to vet potential job candidates they might hire later. Drexel surveys students a year after they graduate; 88 percent of those who responded in 2023 said they had landed a job in their field and about 48 percent received a job offer from one of their co-op employers, according to Faulstick, the university spokesperson.
Nick Bayer, founder and CEO of Saxbys Coffee, offers “student CEO” co-ops to Drexel students (and similar programs under various different names at other universities). Students are in charge of all areas of the operations of an on-campus coffee shop, including ordering goods and supplies, handling profit and loss reports and managing a staff of their peers.
About 41 percent of the company’s corporate employees are former Saxbys student leaders (including students from Drexel and other college programs), according to Rosie Clark-Parsons, the company’s director of experiential learning and impact.
Bayer, the first in his family to go to college, graduated from Cornell University in 2000. “I entered college and my friends all had great networks, their parents were educated, had white-collar jobs,” he said, whereas he had to build a network from scratch — “before the LinkedIn days.”
Bayer, who teaches an entrepreneurship course at Drexel, said that the university and the company both benefit. “We provide a lot of data for faculty members, to use our cafes like a learning living laboratory,” he said. “We do a lot of marketing projects, we’re coming up with product ideas, and we turn these into projects for students.”
Research supports the idea that even shorter-term work experience in college can make a difference for students. Data from the Strada Education Foundation, for example, shows that students who have one internship in college are 50 percent less likely to be underemployed after graduation than peers who didn’t have internships. (Strada is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.)
While Drexel officials try to ensure that students’ co-op experiences are more than drudgery, it’s ultimately up to companies what work students do.
Jacqueline Augugliaro, 20, who just finished her six-month run as the student CEO of the Saxbys Coffee at Drexel, said she was drawn to the Saxbys co-op in part because it did offer leadership and management experience. Roughly 10 hours of her week were spent on management tasks such as payroll, ordering supplies, taking inventory, creating the work schedule, and doing weekly assignments to reflect on team development, community leadership and financial management, she said. The other 30 hours were spent working as a barista. Despite the manual labor involved in her job, Augugliaro said she felt her experience was valuable.
“Usually you’re just like, ‘the intern,’ or, you’re ‘the co-op,’” Augugliaro said. “But here, I have room to make so many decisions, for so much growth.”
There are other trade-offs too. Alex Ramirez, a third-year music industry student at Drexel, said there are fewer paid co-op opportunities available in the arts than in other majors. When Ramirez was unable to find a paid co-op opportunity that fit their interests through the university, they looked outside of Drexel’s system and eventually found a small recording studio willing to take them on part time. But the gig was unpaid.
Ramirez worked two or three 12-hour shifts per week and relied on savings to pay rent and other living expenses during that time. (Drexel offers stipends to students who take unpaid co-ops and typically about one-third of those who apply receive the funding, Sladen said. Ramirez said they were not granted any funding.)
Still, Ramirez said they got to be a “fly on the wall” as bands came into the studio to record, and occasionally got to practice using the equipment. “I definitely feel like it was worth it, honestly. Like, despite all the money that was lost,” Ramirez said. “It wasn’t something that I could just learn through the classes that Drexel offers.”
Natelauri had a similar experience. She said she’s always been good at math and enjoyed accounting classes, but working in an accounting firm gave her a broader perspective. “What we study in school, through my co-op I’ve noticed, is different from what the real accountants do,” Natelauri said.
The experience even shaped how she thinks about her future career. Before starting her co-op, she thought she wanted to do work related to taxes and tax returns. But after spending six months examining nonprofit organizations’ financial statements to make sure everything adds up, she’s changed her mind.
Having had that opportunity to work in auditing, she said, “it’s what my future will be.”
This story about co-op programs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for their higher education newsletter.
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