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MERDEKA BELAJAR KAMPUS MERDEKA (MBKM): Connecting academics and the outside world Erna Herawati Dept of Anthropology, Faculty of Social and Political Science Universitas Padjadjaran e.herawati@unpad.ac.id Merdeka Belajar Kampus Merdeka (MBKM) is a new program launched by the ministry of education in 2020. This program allows undergraduate and vocational students to experience studying and join activities outside their department and campus for three semesters. They can choose any activities which are closely related or not related to their major. The objective of this program is to equipped students not only with knowledge and skill related to their major but also life skills and resilience. Anthropology students at Universitas Padjadjaran join internship program at well-establish business companies and start-up companies; research centres, and many other organisations. Their activities ranging from doing social research, business ethnographic research, marketing research, business plan, project management, and so on. In these activities, students practice knowledge and skill they learn at class from their teacher, as well learn and practice new knowledge and skill from their mentors. This program require teachers to work together with mentors to supervise the students during the internship. An intensive communication between mentors and teachers, and between mentors and students has been established. Gaps between theory learned by students at class and how to practice it during the internship are identified. Critics to Anthropology curriculum began to surface. Teachers started to reflect and review their teaching material and method. Some decided to revise it in order to match the need of the outside world. At the same time, Anthropology students and teachers also have chance to introduce and promote Anthropology to the outside world, which generally has little knowledge about it. Drawing on the experiences of MBKM program at the Department of Anthropology, Universitas Padjadjaran, this paper will discuss how MBKM program has connected the academic and the outside world, and how it has become a potential media to burn the gap between theory and practice. This will in turn change the history in the Anthropology education in Indonesia.