Developing a management information system (MIS) is one approach to meeting the information collection, storage, manipulation, and usage needs of cooperative education. Within cooperative education, MIS can help in the areas of accountability, program planning, decision making, management of cooperative education activities, and program evaluation. The following steps are involved in the process of developing an MIS for cooperative education: (1) determining program goals and objectives; (2) identifying information and data needs; (3) building the database by determining data collection and procedures and by determining the methods for storage and manipulation of information; and (4) reporting and using the information. There are a number of commercially available computer software packages that serve very well as the basis for a locally developed MIS, even though they were not originally developed for that purpose. Among them are The Placement Assistant, Easytrieve, Report Generator, Statistical Analysis Systems, dBase, Reflex, Minitab, and Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Program information needs should determine what hardware and software is purchased. The computer system selected should allow management, information processing, and educational applications. Ideally, the computer component should be compatible with any mainframe computer in use in the school so that information already available in the student database can be shared between them. (The document contains an 18-item bibliography.) (CML)