113 Strategic planning has become a virtual requirement in higher education management. Huge amounts of time, energy, and money are committed to the process by individuals representing every level in a university’s hierarchy. Despite widespread adoption and commitment, researchers have frequently questioned whether the content of these plans varies significantly among institutions, or if they are essentially interchangeable compendiums of buzzwords and cliches. Our study quantified the presence of various ideas, or themes, in strategic plans from 150 public higher education institutions in the United States. Our analyses provide evidence of what is important to strategic planners in higher education, where in the plans these themes tend to be discussed, and how patterns of usage vary across Carnegie classifications and geographic settings. Such information can be useful to planners in identifying concepts that should be present in their strategic plans, as well as those that can distinguish an institution from its peers. https://doi.org/10.24052/IJHEM/V12N01/ART-1 https://www.ijhem.com/details&cid=113 https://www.ijhem.com/cdn/article_file/2026-01-08-09-20-03-AM.pdf Volume 12 Issue 01 22 2026-02-01 2026-01-08 no Strategic Planning Higher Education Administration Management none 928 12 0 Brent M. Graves Department of Biology, Northern Michigan University, USA Fritz J. Erickson Department of Psychology, Northern Michigan University, USA