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In my mind this is screaming for apprenticeship programs like in Germany.[1][2] Companies need a more streamlined process to get employers early in their caree

• surfmike 9y ago
  Even for people who go to college, more work experience is a huge plus. Waterloo's coop system (4 months of school, 4 months of internship, repeated) provides a great mix of practical experience and academics. It would be great if all majors could have an experience like that.
  • atom-morgan 9y ago
    It was somewhat unbelievable how much my jobs working at Gamestop and Walmart helped in college when so many people around me had never worked a job in their life. Time to rethink minimum wage?
  • vermontdevil 9y ago
    Rochester Institute of Technology has a similar program - Co-op experience. All students are required to complete a specific # of semester work experience before obtaining a degree. I've heard often from employers that they love hiring RIT graduates because of this.
  • ethmarch 9y ago
    I've heard great things about Waterloo's program. Just wanted to give a shout out to Northeastern for its coop system as well. I've learned tons of things on the job that I never would have come across in the classroom. Also, almost every student in every major participates in the program!
  • stevenwoo 9y ago
    I graduated from college 30 years ago and every engineering major at every state university I ever heard of had a coop program.
    • maxerickson 9y ago
      Waterloo places much more emphasis on it. The program is built around every student doing coops.
      • stevenwoo 9y ago
        That part I did not know, most of our professors in our first year engineering classes strongly recommended it, though. I co-oped at a company only about 100 miles from my university, though other students were from out of state schools. The other thing I just thought of was I co-oped at IBM for three semesters which was the max for a location but they had openings in a different country, I probably should have done that instead of staying in the USA for my last co-op, are most of the Waterloo students going to Canadian companies?
        • boyaka 9y ago
          A lot go to SF bay area. I met a large group of them in 2007 when I was doing my coop. My school, University of the Pacific, also had a mandatory coop program, although they started to make it optional sometime after 2009.
    • sotojuan 9y ago
      Not all CS grads come from engineering colleges or departments. A lot liberal arts colleges have CS programs and a lot of CS programs are part of the math/"arts and sciences" department. In that case, the college may not require co-op.
    • surfmike 9y ago
      Yes and it would be great if they were extended to non-engineering majors. Also even in engineering co-ops are far from universal; at my university, not everyone did a co-op and many did only one. There would be a lot of value in people doing multiple co-ops (even 4 or more like Waterloo).
• ones_and_zeros 9y ago
  I know of an employer that has an apprenticeship program. They hire probably 20 or 30 master graduates in to it every semester. It's used as a holding pen for foreign student graduates on OPT while the company gets them an H1B visa. The apprenticeships require a masters degree but the work doesn't. This essentially guarantees they don't get any applicants that are citizens and also helps avoid the h1b dependent designation.
• murph-almighty 9y ago
  I suspect internships are filling that void. My company (and quite a few others) only offer internships to juniors to increase the new hire pipeline.