Community-University Partnerships as Reflected in University's Internship Programs in Indonesia: What Can We Learn from Universities with International Curricula?

Abstract

As Indonesian higher education strives to achieve educational excellence, universities with international curricula have become a focus of improvement efforts. Many of these university efforts involve business schools forming partnerships built around internships. Yet, as this focus on internship partnerships becomes more pronounced, many questions have begun to be raised about whether this is an effective route for linking theory and practice. Viewed from a service-learning perspective ( Duru 2008 ), internship programs may appear appropriate in helping students to translate classroom theories into information that is useful in the practical environment of business. But from the perspective of business schools, do such internship partnerships appear equally useful? This paper uses business frameworks-in particular the business school's concern with the role of human resources in organizations-to build an analysis of the effectiveness of internship partnership programs in Indonesian universities with international curricula.