Abstract
Cooperative Education in Taiwan, as a national institution of education, is originally set to fill the gap between knowledge and practice. By letting students participate in actual practices of working environments, the students can transform their training into real use. However, in the development of this institution, we found some gaps between the original intention of this institution and the actual implements. Still, even with those obvious gaps, the fact that Taiwan is now a low fertility society and the total number of new freshmen is heavily declining,we can’t explain why there is so many students are still enrolling in this institution every year. The main purpose of this thesis is trying to figure out the puzzling situation of this institution. How, and why it is still working? What’s the internal functioning logic? What’s the reasoning process of the unreasonable status quo? What’s the foundation of the ongoing reproduction of this institution? By scrutinizing the history of the institution, the legislative process, news and journal articles, observational participation and in-depth interviews with 17 students. This study tried to analyze the institutional design, the actual functioning process and the real implementation of the student’s working scenarios. The conclusion of this study gave two possible answers. First, the requiredinternship itself re-justified the institution, the exploitation were smuggled by it. This explains why students are still going inand why it is still working.Second, based on the life experiences of these students, and through their eyes in seeing the cooperative education as different opportunities, the reproduction of the institution thus possible.