The themes in higher education research in different countries vary to some extent. This research takes 15 SSCI journals of higher education as examples. A scientometric method was used to classify the themes in higher education research, and a vector space model was employed to calculate the similarities in different countries active in the research hot spots in the cognate area. The results show that the top five ranked keywords of higher education research are assessment, university, sustainability, feedback, and diversity. Higher education research was classified into 20 areas, and different countries were focused on different areas. The number of publications was mainly led by the USA, the UK, and Australia. The most similar countries in the higher education research field were Australia and the UK. European countries had a higher similarity in higher education research with each other, but the similarity between Asian countries was very low. The similarity between different countries exhibited different characteristics, which has important significance for the development of higher education research.