The Role of the Malang City Education and Culture Office in Improving the Performance of Internship Students

The internship program within the framework of Merdeka Belajar Kampus Merdeka (MBKM) is a strategic place to connect academic theory with practice in the world of work. This study aims to examine the role of the Malang City Education and Culture Office in improving the performance of internship students. With a qualitative descriptive approach, data were collected through interviews, observations, and documentation of supervisors and internship students. The results show that this agency makes a real contribution to the formation of students' technical abilities and soft skills through an inclusive work environment, regular mentoring, and provision of work facilities. However, there are still challenges in the form of inequality in the quality of guidance, mismatches in field placement, and suboptimal internal performance evaluation. Therefore, it is necessary to improve a more structured and collaborative internship system between the campus and the agency in order to ptimize the overall development of student competencies.