Implementation of an Internship Program as an Effort to Increase Vocational Competence of Vocational High School Students (Qualitative Study in the Fine Arts Department of SMKN 14 Bandung) Dian Kencana*, Tri Karyono, Juju Masunah Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia Bandung, Indonesia *diankencana1970@gmail.com Abstract—The purpose of writing this article is to describe the results of research on the implementation of internship program to increase vocational compensation for vocational high school students who specialize in Fine Arts Department at SMKN 14 Bandung. This research uses a descriptive method with a qualitative paradigm. Research subjects are students who are doing internship, guiding teacher, and company manager. Data collected through observation, interview and documentation techniques. The internship program carried out by SMKN 14 Bandung is well planned, starting from the formation of a team that will handle the program, preparation of administrative activities, preparation of work programs, scheduling activities and briefing for students. The implementation is carried out in 4 places / industries, the activities have already taken place towards the achievement of professional expertise. Through this internship program, it is proven that the student’s professional competence is increased, which is indicated by the increase in student’s expertise in the field studied, the increase is influenced by internal factor, namely the motivation of students themselves and external factor, namely the learning climate or internship environment that supports, also the support of facilities and infrastructure that is adequate. This internship program contributes to the transformation of knowledge and skills between individual and group. This internship program is recommended to continue to be implemented by SMKN 14 Bandung. Keywords: internship program, vocational competence, fine arts I. INTRODUCTION Present many high school graduates, even college graduates who have difficulty finding work, this is due to limited employment and the quality of school graduates is still low. There are quite a number of vocational school graduates who become unemployed, one of them is because they lack expertise that is suitable to the needs of existing employment. John Ovenham explicitly said if the graduates could not be employed or obtained jobs in accordance with the type and level of education they have [1]. Schools and teachers are considered unsuccessful with their assignments. This means that schools have not been able to meet the needs of the community or working world. One effort to improve the quality and relevance of vocational education is to increase skills and equivalence (Link and Match) in the implementation of Dual System Education (PSG) or Internship. Among the top level education units that are now getting special attention from the government is the Vocational High School. The vocational school is directly related to the production process in the industry or business world, especially if seen as a function of middle labor producers. The application of the Link and Match policy is essentially aimed to improve and strengthen the linkage and similarity (link and match) between vocational education / training institutions and working world. This is an attempt to find a meeting point for Educational Institutions as producers and working world / industry as consumers. According to Pakpahan, the goal of the link and match movement is to bring suppliers closer to the quality of human resources especially those in accordance with the quality of employment [2]. While the basic concept of implementing a dual system Education is the implementation of Education that systematically integrates Education activities (theory) in schools with Education activities (practice) in the industrial world Besides that, the internship program is also effective in reducing unemployment (People’s minds, March 21 th , 2005). Because some of the internship participant can be directly absorbed by the company where the participant is doing the internship. SMK Negeri 14 Bandung is one of the vocational high schools in the field of fine arts and crafts. As one of formal education. This Vocational High School has a vision to be a superior school and mission that is to prepare a middle-class workforce in the field of fine arts and crafts with professional, productive Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 419 2nd International Conference on Arts and Design Education (ICADE 2019) Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL. This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license -http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 275