Analytical study of models and frameworks of higher education governance in the world: a review of meta-narrative or semi-systematic

The main purpose of this study is to systematically analyze the governance models of higher education. To achieve this goal, researchers analyzed related articles and documents using semi-systematic or meta-narrative review method. The meta-narrative review is based on "Hana Snyder Guide to Systematic Review in Management Filed" and the standard provided by "Wong et al". In general, this study seeks to identify and understand all potential relevant researches that has implications for the subject matter, combines and analyzes them to provide a better meaning of the subject matter, instead of measuring the influence of the result.

To conduct this research, the related documents were retrieved by searching the related keywords in English and Persian scientific databases.As the next step, the documents in which the governance model of higher education was presented or discussed, are selected as related documents to the research topic In order to semi-systematically review the written works of Iranian and foreign authors and then the researchers coded and categorized the content of the selected articles with AtlasT, based on qualitative content analysis technique and at the final section analysis of governance dimensions was done based on the results obtained in qualitative content analysis and semi-systematic review.

The higher education governance is a system of power derived from laws, policies, and rules that determine the responsibilities of different actors in higher education system and in general, it can be said that universities operate based on it. In spite of that the higher education governance structures are very different around the world, there are some common patterns between them. The purpose of this study is to identify common patterns, dimensions, components and governance indicators in the studied models. The results also shows that over the past three decades, theoretical conceptualization in this field has been significantly expanded and fundamental models based on the Clark model has been developed. This review indicates the existence of two streams in the proposed models. The first stream has created theoretical frameworks, which different types of higher education systems can be studied and modeled based on those. The models in the second stream has been developed with an inductive and exploratory approach and the typology of the higher education governance system has been determined based on the characteristics of each higher education system.