Research in higher education governance: past performance and an agenda for the future

This paper is a bibliometric overview and evaluation of peer-reviewed articles on governance in higher education. The study uses meta-data from the Scopus journal repository, retrieved using relevant keywords. We analyse the data in VOSviewer software. A content analysis of selected papers is undertaken to comprehend the thematic focus of the knowledge domain. Results show that the field of this research topic has grown exponentially both qualitatively and quantitatively. The conceptual dynamics of the literature unfold the multidimensionality of the topic of this inquiry. Our significant contributions are the scholarly audit of higher education governance research and the identification of several structured research questions for future investigations. This is a maiden attempt to employ bibliometric and content analysis for science mapping and qualitative review in the topic of inquiry.