This book examines the factors responsible for the difficulties being experienced by many young Canadians trying to find permanent jobs in a growing economy and explains how Canadian youths can make the best use of the opportunities offered by academic and other programs to find a satisfying life in the workforce. The following are among the topics discussed in the book's 10 chapters: (1) theories of transition and a holistic developmental model; (2) the role of early experiences in successful transition from school to work; (3) the influence of family heritage (class, gender, ethnicity); (4) education, transition, and the salience of learning (parents' and youths' education, key purposes of education, correlates of parents' aspirations for youth); (5) cooperative education as a bridging program (toward the integration of education and employment, theory and analysis, characteristics of cooperative education students, effectiveness and improvement of cooperative education, work study students); (6) employers and transition; (7) value consonance and transition; (8) testing the model of transition as a cumulative process; (9) comparative models of transition in Canada, Great Britain, and Sweden; and (10) dimensions of transition and conditions for attainment. Eighteen tables/figures are included. Appended are 17 additional tables. The bibliography contains 215 references. (MN)