[Alumni-chat] Re: Co-op then and now

[Lauren Page]

>>Re: Co-op then and now

It seems to me that the market for co-op-type jobs has changed dramatically.
Now, internships are commonplace, but I don't get the impression that this
was true in the past.<<

Jonah<<

I've been meaning to reply to one of these co-op messages, and this is
perhaps as good as any other.

I tried once or twice over the past 18 years to get my employer, a software
company here in MA, to take Antioch students as interns.  The following
problems arose:

1) They're a software company.  Antioch has no computer science program.
2) On the business side, Antioch has no business program.  (I believe my own
liberal arts diploma gives the lie to this, but try convincing an MBA that
"business" is a liberal art!
3) Whereas Northeastern was Antioch's only major competitor in co-operative
education when I attended in 1973-1977, every school around here now offers
internships, and many require it.  Worcester Polytechnic and Bentley, to
name just two, often place interns at this company.

Thus, while the internships were available and the pay was good, there was
no positive reason why a software company should care about an Antioch
intern when the matter was brought to them by someone not very high in the
hierarchy, especially when that student would not be majoring in any of the
areas they perceived as valuable.  No value in training this person, because
the chances of them returning to work for them later were nil.

I'm afraid the situation was not helped by the approach of the co-operative
education folks the last time I tried this, who sent me a form they wanted
to get back before they'd talk to me or anyone else.  The first question on
it was not, "What could a student learn from working for your firm for four
months?" but "How much does it pay?"  Now the way internships worked was
that my manager or some other manager would have to have "head count" for an
intern, but the salary and duties were based on the manager's need, not a
simple "here's the job, and here's the pay."  So the "how much" and "what"
questions were unanswerable unless a manager could find the wherewithal to
fund an internship, for their own purposes.

Finally, a lot of "internships" were really summer jobs for the children of
Corporate Important People.  I even once had the edict come down, "The boss'
boss' daughter needs an internship--think of something for her to do."

If I'd been a manager, I might have done something about this--but I never
wanted to manage others, just projects, and after 18 years the Business
Powers That Be decided that I was too expensive myself!

Lauren "Looking for Her Next Co-op" Page, '77