In 1909, eight Northeastern engineering students sent out co-op applications to four local employers, hoping to land a job at a wage of 10 cents an hour.
One hundred and fifteen years later, this program is Northeastern’s signature draw, with 95% of undergraduate students participating in at least one co-op experience. U.S. News ranked Northeastern as the best institution in the nation in the category of co-ops and internships, and students travel from across the globe to attend the university for that very reason.
While the first co-op experiences in 1909 looked vastly different from what most Northeastern students participate in today, the goal of cooperative education has remained the same since the program’s inception, The News found in a recent review of archives from Carl Ell’s presidency.
The co-op program was initially established exclusively for engineering students by Northeastern’s first president, Frank Palmer Speare, at the Evening Institute of the Boston YMCA, known at the time for its academic experimentation.
The program saw modest growth in its first decade, but its influence at Northeastern boomed under the leadership of Ell, who took over as the dean of the Cooperative School of Engineering in 1917 and later became Northeastern’s second president in 1940. Within a year, both the number of students and companies participating in the co-op program doubled in size, according to a recent report by the College of Engineering celebrating the 115th anniversary of the program.
Students alternated between one-week periods of hands-on work with their employer and traditional classroom study throughout the entire duration of their four-year degree. They were paid at a wage of 10 cents per hour.
Engineering firms traditionally employed two co-op students who worked on alternating weeks. Over the next several decades, the department experimented with different formats for co-op work, including five-week periods of employment, then five weeks of classes for the duration of a five-year degree program.
“In that phrase ‘his own first-hand experience’ is one of the outstanding advantages of the cooperative plan,” Ell said during a 1927 lecture delivered to the Business Conference of New England executives and educational leaders at the University Club of Boston. “It gives to the academic work that touch of reality and significance … to the effect that their cooperative work has given them an added ‘interest in and respect for their theoretical work.’”
The co-op program expanded to the College of Business Administration and Liberal Arts in the 1930s.
Women were first admitted to Northeastern in 1943, with six joining the class of 206 male students. However, the co-op program was suspended shortly after World War II began due to the reshaping of national priorities and resources.
Though the program was restored to its full function in the 1950s, women and minority students struggled to gain full access to co-op experiences for the next several decades.
In 1969, these women submitted a petition to Northeastern’s administration, alleging discrimination from some co-op employers. In a Northeastern University News article, the administration said they were unable to substantiate the charges.
“Discrimination is not something you can really put your finger on,” Roy Wooldridge, then the dean of cooperative education, told the Northeastern University News in a 1971 article. “Usually it’s a feeling which only the individuals involved can express.”
However, Wooldridge acknowledged that discrimination in co-op hiring was likely occurring.
“We could refuse to deal with employers we feel are discriminating against women,” Wooldridge said. “But what does that do to the men already working on co-op for that company? They would be out of a job and that wouldn’t be fair either.”
More than 40 years later, the university also cited the need to preserve other students’ co-op opportunities when students protesting the Israel-Hamas war called on Northeastern to cut ties with military-industrial companies like RTX Corporation, formerly known as Raytheon, and General Dynamics. Students can co-op at these companies, which have supplied weapons to Israel throughout the war.
In an FAQ published in 2023, the university responded to protests by saying that it would not “support efforts to curtail students’ experiential learning options,” based on other students’ “strong political views.”
For students in the 1960s, unequal hiring practices were particularly evident in fields that held strong gender stereotypes: Wooldridge said it would be “very difficult” for a female engineering student to be placed on a construction project, while a male student might be less likely to be hired for a nursing co-op.
Despite these struggles, however, female and minority representation in the student body continued to grow throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Inspired by the work of the emerging Civil Rights Movement, the university made an effort to support the participation of Black students in the experiential learning process. A 1964 grant from the Ford Foundation allowed for a pilot program in which 75 Black students from the Boston area participated in co-op experiences for a three-year period.
The international student population at Northeastern increased in the 1970s, leading to the expansion of international exchange programs. Furthermore, a growing number of students took part in co-op experiences abroad. From 1983 to 1990, the number of global co-op students nearly doubled.
As Northeastern’s global presence expanded over the past two decades, co-op has been made available to all students at campuses across the United States and globally.
In the 2022-23 school year, more than 9,000 undergraduate students participated in co-ops with about 3,500 employers in more than 52 different countries, according to figures from the university.
“In the course of his varied experience at work, the student has an opportunity to see and know first hand what is demanded of men in various positions,” Ell said in his 1927 lecture. “His experience also enables him to know with certainty what kinds of work he is going to find congenial, what kinds are compatible with his already-fixed qualities of temperament and character and finally what kinds are likely to lead to the ultimate position which he hopes to hold.”
