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As Co-op programs gain momentum nationwide, colleges and universities are under growing pressure to show that work-based learning can scale, deliver outcomes, and align with workforce needs. Yet for many institutions, cultural resistance and rigid academic structures continue to limit how deeply Co-op is embedded.

That challenge was the focus of a recent  conversation, where 911������ President Dr. Robert K. McMahan joined hosts Michael Horn and Jeff Selingo to discuss why Co-op works best when it is not treated as an add-on, but as a core institutional design and why more colleges struggle to make that shift.

Throughout the conversation, Dr. McMahan emphasized that experiential learning delivers its greatest value when it is fully integrated into the educational model. 

 “The real magic of the model is in its integration into the education.”

While many universities offer internships or optional Co-op experiences, fewer than half of U.S. undergraduates complete one before graduating, according to Forbes.

At Kettering, that focus on how students learn is reflected in the institution’s structure. All undergraduate students participate in mandatory, paid Co-op experiences, beginning in their first year, which alternate between academic terms and professional placements. By graduation, Kettering students complete approximately two and a half years of paid, full-time professional experience as part of their degree requirements.

Reframing Who Higher Education Serves

At the center of this episode of Future U, and a broader debate across higher education, is a deceptively simple question: who is the “customer” of a university?

Dr. McMahan approaches the question from an operational perspective:

“From a strictly kind of operations business perspective, universities don’t like to think of themselves as businesses. In fact, they reject that characterization. But indeed, they are. They’re economic participants. And we play a very real role in establishing the trajectory of our students and the economic viability of those students in their careers.”

Within that framework, he describes how educational value is ultimately validated after graduation:

“In that sense, the student really is very much the product of the university, and the customers are the graduate schools or the organizations downline from that that hire, or that accept our students and establish the value of what we are doing and the value of their experience here.”

At Kettering, this alignment is reinforced at the start of every academic cycle. Students return from Co-op placements with direct insight into which skills matter most, which concepts translate into practice, and where their preparation can be strengthened. 

The result is a student body that engages coursework differently, asking whether ideas work in practice as well as in theory, an approach reflected in Kettering’s national recognition for career preparation and post-graduation outcomes.

Why Co-Op Is Hard to Scale and Why It Still Matters

Another question posed during the episode was why more colleges have not adopted Co-op as a core requirement. 

According to Dr. McMahan, the barriers are structural in nature. Successful Co-op programs require long-term employer partnerships, curricular flexibility, and a willingness to let professional experience shape academic decision-making, conditions many universities were not originally designed to support:

“Employers are operating in a different economy than higher ed was designed to serve. Our students are living in a different reality, and the country faces a different set of challenges. So we are increasingly faced with an educational structure that’s kind of discordant with the world around it.”

That misalignment, he argues, does not mean the model itself is unworkable. Rather, it highlights the degree of institutional change necessary to make the Co-op function effectively:

“It is a scalable model. It is ultimately a model that can be adopted, but it requires institutions to say we perhaps need to organize and think about what we do differently than we do today.”

The Future U conversation reframes these challenges facing higher education. The issue is no longer whether experiential learning works, but whether institutions are willing to evolve their structures to support it at scale. 

In that context, Kettering’s model stands not as an exception to be replicated, but as evidence of what sustained, industry-embedded education can achieve when institutional design remains aligned with real-world outcomes.