Abstract:
There is a significant demand for higher education in Sri Lanka. The stakeholders of higher education are students, graduate employers, funding agencies, staff, and society. It appears that Sri Lankan state universities do not meet the needs of those who are interested in the university system. Possessing a place in a state university is a great challenge for students; the students who learned at state universities face various challenges in finding suitable jobs. Therefore, the key objective of the current study is to explore the key components to consider for strategic planning in Sri Lankan public universities. The Qualitative method that equips documentation data of newspaper articles was adopted. This study used a purposive sampling method; 15 newspaper articles related to strategic planning in Sri Lankan public universities were selected as the research sample. Thematic content analysis is applied to analyze the accumulated data. The specific factors that should be focused on in strategic planning are Global Reputation, Technology Oriented Education, Human Resource Development, Fundraising / Fund generating, Curriculum Quality, Graduate Employability and Academic Innovation.
