ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how to verify the effect of cooperative education on academic performance. It talks about the international comparison between two universities, about the value of university education, Kyoto Sangyo University (KSU) of Japan and Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) of Hong Kong. The content of this chapter is largely based on Tanaka, and Tanaka and Carlson. The individual differences in the quality of work-integrated learning (WIL) were indexed by student-reported learning outcomes as well as the learning context. Only the overall learning outcomes variable was found to be significantly related to higher third year GPA. It is possible that the overall learning context variable functioned as a suppressor variable in the regression. A recent analysis by Conger and Long examining 16 American universities found that female university students had higher GPAs in their first semester versus their male counterparts. The theoretical framework and methodology employed in the chapter were based on those often used by economists.
