Strategic Planning in Higher Education

The current environment of oversight and accountability, along with declining state support for higher education, have prompted many universities to utilize strategic planning in order to achieve their objectives. Yet strangely, relatively little research has been done on evaluation models for assessing strategic planning in higher education institutions. This study endeavors to shed some much-needed light on how higher education institutions in the United States have assessed their university-wide strategic plans by focusing on their evaluation methods. Exemplar characteristics drawn from the study's findings result an evaluation methodology that a higher education institution can apply to its strategic plan initiative and may thus provide academic practitioners with a comprehensive tool with which to evaluate their own institutions' strategic plans.