UC’s co-op rises in national rankings

The latest 2022 issue of the magazine’s influential “Best Colleges” guide ranks UC among the top tier of national universities (No. 148) but perhaps more importantly, the university outpaces almost all national rivals on performance indicators important to students and their families — specifically UC’s cooperative education.

In this year’s rankings, UC’s experience-based co-op and internship program beat out similar programs at both private and public institutions like Duke, Stanford, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Purdue, Georgetown and many others.

As the global founder of cooperative education, UC houses one of the world’s largest co-op programs where each year, students earn a collective $58 million annually working for thousands of employers around the globe. The program allows UC students to sequentially alternate academic semesters with professional, paid work directly tied to their majors with local, national and international employers, from multinational firms to non-profits and start-ups too.

“Not only do we want our students to be ready for their first job, we want them to have the skills they need to build robust and dynamic careers spanning the course of their lives,” says Gigi Escoe, vice provost for undergraduate studies and dean of the Division of Experience-Based Learning and Career Education.

“This is why we've made experience-based learning and career education core components of the UC model for all students. We are intently focused on delivering innovative, future-focused curriculum and programming. We prepare students to work in traditional, remote, and hybrid environments while attending to ideation, team building, on-going professional development, networking and culture. In the end, it’s all about ensuring students are set up for long-term, lifelong success.”

It was UC’s co-op program that brought second-year computer science student Nachiket Dighe from Mumbai, India to Cincinnati. 

“Getting co-op experience before graduation is one of the best things about the university,” Dinghe says. 

UC’s focus on its Bearcat Promise (that all students will graduate with a diploma in one hand and a career plan in the other) provides students a guided path to and a competitive advantage at graduation.

This fall, UC welcomed its most diverse student body ever. That diversity complements UC’s co-op and internship program, as recruiting employers see a diverse workforce as a cultural and competitive necessity.

• UC is more diverse with racial and ethnic minorities making up 24.1% of this year’s student body, a slight increase over last year’s 23.2%.
• Nearly one in four first-year students are minorities.
• Largest Uptown student enrollment in history: UC’s largest campus is located in  Uptown, boasting more than 40,000 students.
• The quality of UC students has remained solid as well. The average GPA for incoming students at the Uptown campus is 3.7, the same as last year’s. 
• Read the full Back to School package.

• Best Colleges for Veterans: No. 84, up 14 spots from last year
• Steady at No. 147 for Best Value
• New rankings this year include Best Undergraduate Computer Science (No. 135), Business (No. 84) and Nursing (No. 43) programs
• See U.S. News’ 2022 graduate rankings

Featured image at top: UC co-op student working on a Turner Construction site. Photo/Joseph Fuqua II/UC Creative + Brand