"A Strategy for the Development of Human and Economic Resources." Proceedings of the World Conference on Cooperative Education (2nd, Boston, Massachusetts, April 23-24, 1981).

Overview & Synopsis

The Second World Conference on Cooperative Education, held in April 1981, in conjunction with the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Cooperative Education Association in Boston, emphasized that the need to relate education and work is a worldwide concern. Summaries of the Conference's major presentations and selections from the rest are reproduced in this publication on international cooperative education to illustrate the commonality of the problem, the variables that must be dealt with, and the strategies used or proposed in different regions of the world. It was the consensus of the 1,000 representatives of industry, government, labor, and education from 34 countries who attended the conference that the traditional pattern of education--nine months on the campus followed by three months of vacation--is not meeting the education and training needs of all students equally well. Representatives from both developed and developing countries believe the following, as evidenced by conference presentations and meetings: (1) strategies for relating education and work should be incorporated into the education system earlier than university level--at the secondary level in developed countries and in elementary grades in developing countries; (2) changes in social mores would be necessary to encourage men and women to train for jobs rather than pursue liberal arts education; (3) government support will be needed to allow experimentation with curriculum to fit the needs of students and industry; and (4) the North American cooperative education models incorporate most of the elements that educators and employers believe essential. A list of conference participants is included in the Proceedings. (KC)