There's always a balance to be struck. Very often, students will do 2-6 terms in the same place. The difference is that the part that exceeds 4 months only happens if it's a good fit for both student and employer.
Compare that to some places that do an entire 16 month co-op at once in the middle of your program (e.g. McMaster). I've heard horror stories of people knowing in the first 3 weeks that they were going to hate working there, but were basically obligated to work there for another 15 months to get credit. You can put up with almost anything for 4 months.
That, and it's much easier to schedule classes to be shared by non-coop students and coop students when the terms align (non-coop do 8 months school, 4 months summer, etc).
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There's always a balance to be struck. Very often, students will do 2-6 terms in the same place. The difference is that the part that exceeds 4 months only happens if it's a good fit for both student and employer.
Compare that to some places that do an entire 16 month co-op at once in the middle of your program (e.g. McMaster). I've heard horror stories of people knowing in the first 3 weeks that they were going to hate working there, but were basically obligated to work there for another 15 months to get credit. You can put up with almost anything for 4 months.
That, and it's much easier to schedule classes to be shared by non-coop students and coop students when the terms align (non-coop do 8 months school, 4 months summer, etc).