To understand students' perceptions about cooperative education and internships, StudentPoll read them a series of statements and asked them to indicate whether they completely agreed, somewhat agreed, somewhat disagreed, completely disagreed or didn't know/weren't sure how to respond to the statement. Before reading each statement, we explained that cooperative education allowed students to experience different career-related jobs that help pay for their college education. Then we described internships as opportunities for students to gain career-related experiences, but not necessarily for pay.
Overall, these findings reveal that a majority of the students surveyed have very positive perceptions about cooperative education, agreeing that it "is better than internships because it would help you pay for your college education" and that "students who participate in co-op are highly motivated and intelligent." In fact, students expressed the strongest level of agreement with the statement about co-op providing a way to help finance a college education: More than three-quarters of students surveyed completely or somewhat agreed that co-op education is better than internships because it can help pay for a college education.
While some in higher education may view co-op as an educational approach of lesser quality and prestige, students appear to have a very different opinion. For example, 61 percent of all students surveyed, completely or somewhat agreed that students who participate in co-op are highly motivated and intelligent. More than half also agreed that co-op is offered at prestigious schools including 60 percent of students with SAT scores of 1270 or higher and 55 percent of those with ACTs of 26 or higher.
StudentPoll also asked students to what extent they agreed that "you wouldn't want to attend a college where co-op experiences are a requirement." A small segment of students with the highest SAT and ACT scores were more likely to completely agree with this statement, perhaps reacting to the required nature of co-op. By comparison, a small segment of students with ACT scores of 22-25 were more likely to completely disagree with this statement than their counterparts. By income level, 63 percent of students who reported family incomes of less than $50K disagreed that they wouldn't want to attend a college that required co-op compared to 54 percent of those with incomes in the $50K-$75K range and 49 percent of students with family incomes of greater than $75K.
When StudentPoll read students a similar statement about internships - "you wouldn't want to attend a college where you have to participate in internships"-31 percent of students reporting incomes of less than $50K completely disagreed with this statement compared to 22 percent of those in the $50K-$75 range and 17 percent of students with family incomes greater than $75K.
