Focusing on the development of students’s comprehensive capacity and the improvement of students’ core competitiveness, cooperative education (CO-OP) is a kind of talent nurturing mode which optimizes the advantages of different educational platforms such as schools, enterprises and research institutions, and thus integrates classroom-based learning with work-based learning.

Cooperative education began in the early 1900s when Dr. Herman Schneider, an egineering professor at the University of Cincinati, first suggested establishing a program combining academic studies with concrete experience. After over 100 years development, this educational mode has been implemented in more than 3,000 colleges and universities in many countries around the world, i.e. the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain, China, etc.

In 1985, Shanghai University of Engineering Science (SUES), in partnership with University of Waterloo, spearheaded the CO-OP pilot in our country by adopting a “three terms a year, study/work sequence” mode--that is to say, during the academic year, undergraduates are requested to work as “professionals” in specified positions in certain enterprises for three work terms with each term lasting six to eight months.

In 2014, after thirty years of rapid development, the scale of CO-OP students in SUES has reached 8,500 people, accounting for 62% of the total number of students with coverage of more than 75% of all specialties. Over 50% of these CO-OP students are from outside of Shanghai. The total number of cooperative units has reached 3,500, 660 of which are CO-OP base units and over 40 of which are located outside of Shanghai. In 2014, the CO-OP employers in partnership with SUES are distributed across the nation, i.e. all over the thirty provinces, autonomous regions and Hong Kong, Taiwan and other regions, 30% of which are employers outside of Shanghai.

More than 70% job positions are obtained through the school recommendation. SUES holds recruitment fairs in May every year to attract about 300 employers who provide a total of over 4,300 positions. Every year SUES is also active in organizing more than 600 students to participate in the study of school-enterprise cooperative projects for the purpose of improving students' ability of innovation and practice. SUES has also vigorously promoted international CO-OP programs and sent more than 600 students to dozens of countries such as the UK, the USA, Japan, Korea, Italy and so forth to receive CO-OP for the expansion of the international field of vision.

SUES attaches great importance to the quality of CO-OP and has formed a coordinator team of over 600 teachers to manage the work-term affairs and career-related services for students. In addition, SUES insists on the implementation of quality assurance measurements i.e. “college-department quaternary visit mechanism”, “educational quality inspection mechanism”, “general survey mechanism of business-report credibility” and so on.

CO-OP plays an active role in upgrading students’ core competitiveness. Every year, about 40% CO-OP students are employed in the cooperative units of SUES. The favorability rate of CO-OP among students and parents is always maintained at above 98% and the satisfaction degree among various employers above 97%. SUES also integrates CO-OP with graduate employment, ideological education and so forth, forming two practical educating brands, i.e. “pre-employment program” and “knowledge and practice class”.

Our talent cultivating mode of CO-OP is all along fully affirmed by all sectors of the community. In 2006, SUES was the first university in the country given the title of “National Cooperative Education Demonstration Base”. In 2011, SUES became one of the first batches of sixty two “Excellent Engineers Training Plan (EETP)” pilot universities due to its school-running characteristics of CO-OP. At present, SUES is actively carrying out the education reform of complete credit system. On this background, the CO-OP program is gradually shifting from the present model of “three terms a year” to a more flexible model of “three terms /five periods a year, study/work integration ” and is expected to have all students of any major benefited from CO-OP.