Lecturer Internship Program in Industry to Provide Real Work Experience for University Students

Abstrak

Indonesia higher education learning system is currently less responsive to the industrial job
dynamics. As a result, there is a mismatch between graduates’ skill with the competencies
required by industry. Higher education has prepared nearly one million students to become
teachers, but the government has no plans to increase the number of public servant teachers.
This policy makes most of graduates are unemployed. Companies in non-education and
manufacturing services have started complaining about the difficulty of finding workers
like engineers to fill in skilled positions. The rapid changing of industrial job dynamics
make learning in higher education institution should move as rapidly as possible with the
industry. Therefore, it is necessary to develop collaboration between higher education
institution and industry. This paper proposed an innovation to learn and develop knowledge
from industry through lecturer internship program. After attending internship program in
the industry, lecturers are expected to provide more real working experience to the students.
The lecturer internship program in the industry will be focused on product research and
development collaboration. In this paper will be presented a theoretical study about: (1)the
benefits; (2)factors that can affect; or (3)hinder the success of lecturer internship program in
the industry.
Keywords: [lecturer, internship, program, industry, university