{"83991":{"#nid":"83991","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Studies Show Students Who Co-op Get Jobs Faster, Earn More Than Peers","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAs Adam Dean\u0027s classmates head back to school this fall, he\u0027ll be heading back to work. As one of 3,500 students in Georgia Tech\u0027s cooperative education program, the chemical engineering senior will spend the fall semester working 40 hours a week at Kerr McGee in Savannah developing titanium dioxide, a pigment that colors everything from the cream filling in Oreo\u0027s to paper for your computer printer.  Dean hopes the five semesters he\u0027ll spend working will help him conquer the toughest job market in almost a decade. He may be right. Two recent studies suggest that students who participate in cooperative education programs get their first job faster and at a higher starting salary than their peers. Once they get that job, they receive better performance reviews, move up the ranks faster and receive more pay increases than new employees who haven\u0027t co-oped. \u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EWith the June national unemployment rate at its highest in nine years (6.4 percent), many students are worried that a college degree may not be enough to help them land that first job quickly.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022Nowadays my friends can\u0027t get jobs. Companies want you to have experience, but I don\u0027t know how you get experience without getting a job,\u0022 said Michael Sugar, a biomedical and mechanical engineering junior at Tech. His co-op job developing and testing artificial cartilage at Salumedica in Atlanta allows him to get that elusive experience before he graduates in 2006.  \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ELike their academic cousin, the internship, co-op programs give students a chance to gain professional experience while they\u0027re enrolled in college. But while internships are often part-time, unpaid or last only for a semester or two, students in co-opassignments work full-time, for pay, alternating semesters of work and school. This extended employment with one company gives students the chance to increase their level of responsibilities over time and use their education on the job.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EOnce they graduate, students who have co-op experience tend to get their first job out of college faster and at a higher starting salary than recent graduates who haven\u0027t co-oped, according to a study by Georgia Tech\u0027s Office of Assessment. The survey, conducted between December 2001 and May 2003, contains responses from more than 3,000 recent Georgia Tech graduates.  It found that 45 percent of co-op students had found jobs by graduation compared with 37.9 percent of students who had no co-op experience. In addition, the average starting salary for co-op students who had job offers by graduation was $48,555 compared with $45,326.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAnother study conducted by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University also found that students who co-op receive higher starting salaries than their non-co-op peers. On top of that, it suggested that once they are on the job, co-op students receive better performance reviews, faster promotions and better pay increases than co-workers without co-op experience.  The study looked at 11,000 employees, most of them hired between 1995 and 2000, at four multinational corporations. The average starting salary for employees with co-op experience was $39,700 compared to $37,600 for other employees hired straight out of college. The gap widens over time, with co-op hires in the study making a current average of $46,300 compared to $42, 400 for the non co-ops.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ECo-op hires were twice as likely to receive better performance reviews and receive the highest performance rating than non co-op hires. Two-thirds of the co-op hires received at least one promotion during their tenure compared to one-third of their non-co-op peers. And 14 percent of the co-op hires were promoted to managerial positions while only 7 percent of the non co-op hires made it to those ranks. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022It\u0027s a symbiotic relationship,\u0022 said Tom Akins, executive director of Georgia Tech\u0027s Division of Professional Practice. \u0022That\u0027s one of the major reasons it works so well. Students get real-world experience, companies get employees with the latest knowledge and faculty get students who can give input from the corporate world.\u0022\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ECo-op programs have been around for nearly a century. The University of Cincinnati started the first co-op program in 1906. Georgia Tech began its program just six years later. Today, Tech\u0027s is the largest totally optional co-op program in the country, with more than 3,500 students enrolled. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ETimothy Langlais, a chemical engineering major at Tech, said the prospect of future employment and a salary is great, but so is the money he earns at his co-op job at Michelin. \u0022I\u0027m enjoying the money. I\u0027m the oldest of three kids and the first to go to college. For me, being self-sufficient is definitely a strong point of the program,\u0022 he said. For some students, the extra money can mean the difference between graduating with student loans and being debt free.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022Classwork is a different kind of learning. If you just take classes, you\u0027re only getting half the story. The degree builds you up, but co-op gives you a head start,\u0022 said Dean. And in this tough economy, he said, he\u0027ll take all the help he can get.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"Two recent studies suggest that students who participate in cooperative education programs get their first job faster and at a higher starting salary than their peers. Once they get that job, they receive better performance reviews, move up the ranks faster and receive more pay increases than new employees who haven\u0027t co-oped.  With the June national unemployment rate at its highest in nine years (6.4 percent), many students are looking for all the help they can get.","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":"","uid":"27304","created_gmt":"2003-07-18 00:00:00","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:02:06","author":"Matthew Nagel","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2003-07-16T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2003-07-16T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"84001":{"id":"84001","type":"image","title":"Co-op employer Tom Gambino with students","body":null,"created":"1449178102","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:28:22","changed":"1475894704","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:45:04"}},"media_ids":["84001"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.co-op.edu\/","title":"National Commission for Cooperative Education"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.profpractice.gatech.edu\/","title":"Division of Professional Practice"}],"groups":[{"id":"1214","name":"News Room"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Tech Media Relations\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELaura Diamond\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:laura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Elaura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-894-6016\u003Cbr \/\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-660-2926\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["david.terraso@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}