Yasushi Tanaka is Professor in the Faculty of Economics at Kyoto Sangyo University, Kyoto, Japan. His main research field is labour economics. He is also a member of the steering committee of the Center of Research and Development for Cooperative Education (CRDCE) at Kyoto Sangyo University, and a member of the World Association of Cooperative Education (WACE) Commission on Strategic Planning as well as of the WACE International Research Group.

"Through this book the author, Dr. Tanaka, achieves his goal of making the economic analysis of questions relating to the value of co-operative education accessible and possible for researchers and practitioners alike. This is a unique and valuable addition to the field of research in co-operative education and will be of interest and benefit to those exploring questions of the effect of co-op on academic achievement and job prospects. In addition, is it refreshing to see this type of research from an Asian context that offers a different perspective than what is predominately in the literature to date." —Dr. Norah McRae, Executive Director, Co-operative Education Program and Career Services, University of Victoria, Canada"An insightful book that looks at the under-researched area of co-operative education's potential impact on academic achievement. This book is definitely worth reading for any Higher Education professional involved in employability/work experience provisions." — Richard Mendez, Head of Employer Engagement & Entrepreneurship, Keele University, U.K."This book provides an economic perspective of cooperative education and work-integrated learning… The book is well-informed with established cooperative education literature and draws in relevant economics literature to support the arguments presented. The book makes a very useful and valuable contribution to the cooperative education literature around a difficult to comprehend subject and it, encouragingly, does so in a way that even the less mathematically inclined can follow this challenging topic." — Karsten Zegwaard, Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education Volume 16, Issue 1, 2015"Dr Tanaka’s text is one sorely needed by the cooperative learning field as it takes an immensely thorough and data-grounded approach to evaluate the effectiveness of this mode of education as much of the literature on the topic does not do this. His framing of the analysis with historical and philosophical contexts for work based programmes like cooperative learning help the novice economics reader easily engage with the text. The analyses undertaken and evaluated are described in a way that should enable others to follow in Dr Tanaka’s research within their own institutions and thus grow the evidence base for the effectiveness of cooperative education all the more. The book is intended for busy practitioners, and I have to say that I think that this is eminently the case. A very rich, worthwhile read for those involved in work based and cooperative learning at institutional and national levels." — Sarah Flynn, Chair of ASET, the Work Based and Placement Learning Association

• 1. Introduction Part I: The Background 2. History, Present State and Definition of Cooperative Education Part II: The Theoretical Framework: an economic analysis of cooperative education 3. Investing in Human Capital: Education and OJT 4. Economic Analysis of Cooperative Education Part III: The Empirical Assessment: A statistical/econometric evaluation of cooperative education 5. Statistical/econometric Tools to Analyse the Effectiveness of Cooperative Education 6. Hypothesis Testing: t-test, z-test, χ2 test and ANOVA 7. Constructing a Framework for Regression Analysis 8. Who Takes Cooperative Education Programme? 9. Does Cooperative Education Help Raise Academic Performance in Japan and Hong Kong? 10. Does Cooperative Education have Positive Effects on Job Search and Performance? 11. Conclusion