This study aims to analyze how public Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Minas Gerais, Brazil, are incorporating sustainability into their Institutional Development Plans (IDPs), examining whether these strategic documents align with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN 2030 Agenda.
A descriptive, quantitative and documentary study using natural language processing (NLP) through structural topic modeling (STM), complemented by human content analysis, applied to 11 IDPs collected from public federal universities in Minas Gerais.
Although sustainability is present sporadically in the analyzed documents, its embedding occurs in a fragmented and peripheral way, without constituting a structuring axis of institutional policies. Three structural problems were identified: conceptual fragmentation, low lexical density and lack of operationalization linked to measurable goals or clear indicators.
The analysis is limited to formal documents, not encompassing institutional practices existing independently of IDP content. Future research should explore longitudinal comparisons across Brazilian states and successive IDP cycles.
Results point to the urgent need for a critical review of IDPs to incorporate socio-environmental issues explicitly, demanding a reformulation of IDP elaboration and implementation processes.
HEIs, as transformative agents and civic educators, must align their strategic plans with contemporary sustainability challenges, fostering effective public policies and strengthening university governance toward the SDGs.
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to apply topic modeling to assess sustainability in Brazilian federal university IDPs, offering a replicable methodological framework for institutional strategic planning research.
