Public Relations for Vocational Higher Education

Vocational education can take place at the secondary, post-secondary, further education, and higher education level;and usually interact with the apprenticeship system. At the post-secondary level, vocational education is often provided by highly specialized company, technical schools, community colleges, colleges of further education, universities, institutes of technology/polytechnic institutes. In Indonesia, vocational higher education degree is still considered as second level education if it compared with the bachelor degree. The paradigm of people and industry should be changed according to the high demand of skillful workers. It needs very specific public relations strategy programs to pursue better image and more enthusiast to fullfil the revitalization of vocational-based higher education that was declared by the the President of Republik Indonesia, Joko Widodo. Historically, the practice of public relations within universities has been one-way, asymmetrical (Pirozek & Heskova, 2003). In the past, practitioners have a great deal of emphasis on media relations. In recent years, scholars have advocated a strategicapproach to university public relations that moves beyond media relations and embraces strategic management, twoway symmetrical communication, and various other excellence principles. The methodology approach used in this research is quantitative and qualitative (sequentially hybrid). The objective is to get answers of the most effective strategies that suit the needs of universities (higher education), specifically vocational higher education colleges. This ongoing research formulates the best strategies that can be done by public relations in vocational colleges, such as; high school roadshow and digital branding through prominence ambassadors. These results will continue to grow, resulting in other strategies along with the development of this research.