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.

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, ¿2 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

The book offers a rigorous theoretical framework based on human capital theory of labour economics and econometric analysis, which are well-established concepts in the field of Economics, with an objective quantitative methodology to analyze and assess cooperative education programmes.