Internships and Co-Ops

In the context of higher education, the terms internship and cooperative education program (co-op) refer to the integration of some form of workplace experience within a student's program of study. Internships and co-ops differ substantially from student's extracurricular part-time or full-time income generating work activities because they are focused on the attainment of learning outcomes, rather than payment for work. The terms internship and co-op are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to a variety of work experience programs. However, substantial longer term work experience activities (e.g., full-time work activities for the duration of a semester) that are systematically embedded in a higher education program are often referred to as co-ops, while the term internships is often used to describe smaller scale work placement or experience activities (e.g., part-time or fulltime work activities for the duration of several days or weeks) or substantial longer term work experiences similar to co-ops. Both internships and co-ops may represent a compulsory component of a students' higher degree program or an elective.