How Co-op Copes

Boston's Northeastern University has 38,000 full-and part-time students, which makes it just about the largest private university in the U.S., but it has long been overshadowed by the fame of such neighbors as Harvard and M.I.T. Lately, however, many educators have come to look on Northeastern's work-study program as an answer to their own institutions' financial troubles. The reason: by adopting the Northeastern system, a college can increase its enrollment by 40% without having to hire new faculty or constructing new buildings.

The system works this way: after a conventional freshman year, a student alternates a semester of classroom learning with a semester of work related to his studies. A chemistry major may work as a laboratory technician, for example, a business major as a salesman, or a mathematics major as a computer programmer. Called "cooperative education" (or "co-op") because it enlists the participation of 1,600 Boston-area employers, the Northeastern system requires five years for a degree. But enthusiasts say that it makes college more "relevant" by offering students a practical goal for their studies, gives them a head start on their careers and enables youngsters from poor families to earn a college education. Northeastern estimates that about two-thirds of its 9,283 undergraduate co-op students work their way through college (tuition: $775 per quarter) thanks to co-op jobs paying from $70 to $150 a week.

Soil on Hands. Northeastern was among the pioneers of the co-op plan back in 1909, but in the next three decades only 25 other schools followed its lead. Since 1962, however, colleges like Wilberforce University in Ohio, Beloit College in Wisconsin and Pasadena City College in California have flocked to the plan, both for its inherent educational advantages and for its solutions to problems of space and cost. Today, more than 300 institutions have begun cooperative education. An estimated 300 more are considering the step--spurred on by a White House recommendation that $10.8 million in startup grants be voted by Congress. Last month some 250 businessmen and educators met near Boston for a crash course on the benefits of the co-op system. Willard Wirtz, former Secretary of Labor and now president of the Manpower Institute, summed up the theory this way: "The learning and work functions--with love--seem to me to involve life's identifiable values. None is meaningful without the others." Says Northeastern's Dean of Co-op Education Roy L. Wooldridge: "For years Northeastern labored in the vineyard, looked down on by other schools because we got soil on our hands. Suddenly, a lot of people want some soil in their ivory towers."

Co-op education is not equally suited to everyone. Some of Northeastern's 2,240 liberal arts students have a hard time finding jobs that relate directly to studies in philosophy or literature. Gary Esposito, a political science major, spent his most recent co-op term as a bank clerk ("It was that or nothing," he says). Some professors complain that their students place too much emphasis on vocational training. As one critic put it, "the sociology majors all want to become social workers."

Co-op's supporters see no harm in being practical, however. Asa S. Knowles, Northeastern's president, calls co-op a "distinctly American philosophy of higher education," and he adds: "We attract the student who is career-oriented and hungry for practical education."

Typical is Alan Biren, 23, of Roslyn, N.Y., a marketing major whose father is a salesman of printing equipment. He alternated study with selling groceries and toilet goods for Armour-Dial Inc., and he plans to join the company full time after graduation this June for about 20% more pay than a graduate of a traditional four-year college would receive. "The best thing I've learned," Biren says of his student career, "is how to communicate in selling." Scholars might grumble at such a judgment, but Biren's wife Sandra, a former Northeastern student herself, explains: "He's much more business-oriented than intellectual, and his work experience helped him do better in school by giving him a goal."

Other Northeasterners also stress the practical advantages of co-op education. Says Calvin True, 25, a law student who spent last term as a probate clerk: "Coop gives you practical experience in a field in which you desire to practice, and you know what you want to do when you graduate." Alan Kandel, a management major who worked as an accountant, agrees. "I have friends in other schools who take summer jobs, and I know I'm way ahead of them."

The greatest practical advantages of coop, however, accrue to the colleges that adopt it. Northeastern officials estimate that co-op education enables them to maintain a campus only two-thirds the size that would otherwise be necessary for a student body as big as theirs. And their co-op students earn some $25 million a year; if that sum were needed for scholarships, it would require an endowment of several hundred millions. With such benefits available, financially pressed educators can hardly help regarding the co-op movement with increasing favor.

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