In European education and policy research, quantitative textual analysis (QTA) has been increasingly used to examine institutional and policy documents at scale, particularly within European Union governance and comparative strategy research (Bunea & Ibenskas, 2015). Existing European studies demonstrate how computational and text-oriented approaches enable systematic comparison of strategic discourses across institutions and national contexts (e.g. Bunea & Ibenskas, 2015). Universities increasingly rely on formal strategy documents to articulate institutional identities, priorities, and future orientations. These documents function simultaneously as texts that project imagined futures and as processes shaped by negotiations among stakeholders and competing institutional logics. While higher education research has paid growing attention to strategic governance, the methodological toolkit used to study university strategies has remained largely qualitative approaches. This creates limitations when scholars seek to analyse large collections of strategic documents or to conduct systematic cross-institutional or comparative research.

The aim of this work-in-progress study is to explore the potential of QTA as a methodological approach for higher education strategy research. Rather than presenting a completed empirical study, we present QTA as a complementary methodological approach and reflect on its opportunities and limitations when applied to the analysis of university strategy documents. The contribution is explicitly exploratory and methodological in nature, positioning the paper as a laboratory space for methodological experimentation and conceptual clarification. A synopsis of this research (originally titled “Introducing Quantitative Textual Analysis in Higher Education Strategy Research: Opportunities, Advantages, and Limitations”) has been accepted for publication in the volume of book series Theory and Method in Higher Education Research published by Emerald Publishing Limited. The study is guided by the following research questions:

1. How can Quantitative Textual Analysis be used to systematically examine large collections of university strategy documents?
2. What kinds of patterns, and tendencies become visible through QTA that may remain less apparent in qualitative analysis alone?
3. What methodological advantages and limitations arise when QTA is applied to the study of higher education strategies?

Conceptually, the study builds on the understanding of university strategies as both meaningful artefacts and steering instruments (Stensaker et al., 2024). Strategy documents are treated not merely as neutral representations of institutional intentions but as sites of meaning-making through which universities communicate priorities, values, and imagined futures (Stensaker & Hermansen, 2025). In this sense, the study aligns with research on strategic governance and institutional sense-making in higher education, while responding to calls for greater methodological pluralism in the field (Wells et al., 2015).

From a theoretical perspective, the study draws on insights from computational text analysis developed in political science and the digital humanities, where text is treated as data capable of revealing latent structures, framing dynamics, and patterns of emphasis across large corpora (Grimmer & Stewart, 2013). QTA is approached not as a replacement for close reading or qualitative interpretation, but as a way to amplify human analytical capacity by enabling systematic discovery, measurement, and comparison across texts.

The empirical focus of the illustrative example is Finnish universities` strategy documents. This context is used not to produce generalizable findings, but to demonstrate how QTA procedures can be applied within a European higher education system. The European dimension of the research lies both in this contextual grounding and in the broader relevance of QTA for comparative studies of higher education strategies across national systems.

By framing QTA as a methodological complement to established qualitative approaches, it seeks to contribute to ongoing methodological discussions in higher education research and aims to open space for future comparative analyses of how universities linguistically construct priorities, responsibilities, and futures within changing European and global contexts.

This study adopts Quantitative Textual Analysis (QTA) as an exploratory methodological approach for analysing university strategy documents. The methodology is introduced not as a finalized empirical design but as a laboratory framework intended to demonstrate analytical procedures, reflect on methodological choices, and assess the suitability of QTA for higher education strategy research. QTA treats textual material as data that can be systematically examined to identify patterns of meaning-making, and thematic salience across documents (Hurtado Bodell, 2024). In line with established approaches in computational text analysis (e.g. Grimmer & Stewart, 2013; Baden et al., 2022), the method supports three interrelated analytical tasks: discovery of recurring patterns, measurement of theoretically relevant concepts through textual indicators, and inference about broader thematic tendencies. Importantly, QTA is positioned as a complement to qualitative reading rather than a substitute for interpretive analysis. The empirical material used for illustration consists of Finnish universities` strategy documents. The empirical example is illustrative rather than exhaustive, serving to demonstrate how QTA procedures can be applied rather than to generate definitive empirical claims. Analytically, the chapter focuses on examining frequencies and co-occurrences of selected thematic elements, such as sustainability, futures thinking, and intergenerational responsibility. These themes are used to show how QTA can help trace shifts in emphasis, identify dominant or marginal concepts, and reveal linguistic patterns that may not be immediately visible through close reading alone. The analysis foregrounds transparency and replicability, highlighting how computational approaches enable systematic comparison across documents. At the same time, the methodology explicitly acknowledges its limitations. QTA entails risks related to technological validity, conceptual oversimplification, and the potential disconnection between algorithmic outputs and substantive meaning. These risks are addressed through a reflexive methodological stance that situates computational techniques within theoretically informed research designs and emphasizes the continued necessity of interpretive judgement. Given the current stage of the research, the methodology does not aim to deliver comprehensive empirical results. Instead, it provides a structured methodological demonstration that clarifies analytical logic, highlights strengths and weaknesses of QTA, and outlines possibilities for future large-scale, and comparative studies in European higher education contexts.

As a work-in-progress and laboratory-oriented contribution, this study does not aim to present finalized empirical findings. Instead, it outlines expected and preliminary outcomes related to methodological development and conceptual clarification in higher education strategy research. First, the study is expected to demonstrate how QTA can function as a methodological extension of existing qualitative approaches to university strategies. By treating strategy documents as data while maintaining a reflexive interpretive stance, QTA is anticipated to make visible patterns of thematic salience, repetition, and association that are difficult to identify through close reading alone. This includes insights into how concepts such as sustainability, futures thinking, and intergenerational responsibility are linguistically produced and positioned within strategic discourse. Second, the exploratory analysis is expected to clarify the analytical affordances and constraints of QTA when applied to higher education contexts. While computational approaches offer efficiency, comparability, and transparency, the study anticipates identifying risks related to technological validity, conceptual reductionism, and the potential detachment of textual indicators from institutional meaning-making. Articulating these limitations is treated as a key outcome, contributing to more responsible and theoretically informed uses of QTA in the field. Third, the study aims to contribute to future research agendas by positioning QTA as a tool that enables comparative analyses of university strategies across European systems. The illustrative use of Finnish universities` strategies is expected to show how QTA can support broader inquiries into how universities imagine futures, articulate responsibilities, and respond to evolving policy environments. Overall, the anticipated contribution lies less in substantive empirical claims and more in advancing methodological discussion. By framing QTA as a complementary and reflexive approach, the study seeks to enrich the methodological repertoire of higher education research and support more systematic analyses of institutional futures.

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