Management Commitment
Management within the organization should have an
understanding of why cooperative education and internships are being considered
as manpower tools. That way, adequate financial resources, supervision,
internal monitoring and evaluation of the program will become a matter of good
business practice. Reasons for developing a cooperative education or
intern program are usually combinations of factors that include:
- Productivity - getting a job done
with students who have some academic knowledge of the field in which the task
needs to be accomplished. It has been proved that students remaining
through more than two cooperative education work periods provide the most cost
effective means of performing certain tasks.
- Full-time employment tryout - while
getting a specific task or tasks accomplished, the organization wishes to try
out students that will eventually be graduating with the intention of hiring
the best of the ones employed as cooperative education or internship students.
- Participation in the academic process
- employers participating in cooperative education/intern programs become
partners in the education process of the students with which they are directly
involved. Indirectly, they also have input to the curriculum that
provides manpower for the field.
- Affirmative Action - many employers
find they are able to more effectively build a diverse work team through a
cooperative education/internship program.
Organizations may find the following
steps/procedures helpful in establishing and maintaining management commitment.
- Co-op/internship program administrators should
systematically and consistently provide program performance feedback to
management, such as long-term retention and other successes, achieved by the
program.
- The organization may find it cost effective to hire
former co-ops or interns for full-time employment and get management involved
in the recruiting effort.
- The organization might find it helpful to use
managers as mentors for co-ops/interns and to get managers involved with the
co-op/intern program so students will have high-level contact.
- It has also been helpful for organizations to
schedule management presentations for co-ops and interns.
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