Higher Education Reforms; A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Over the past few decades the education sector has witnessed several reforms and a lot of research work has been done to understand and manage these reforms (Olssen, 2021). This paper aims at presenting a systematic review of 102 articles (1990 to 2023) on Higher Education Reforms to understand the direction, nature, and implementation of the phenomenon from a proper perspective. It attempts to summarize, analyze, and integrate the literature on Higher Education Reforms to determine the steering drivers, patterns, processes, and major narratives of the educational reforms over time. Based on the findings of the study, a holistic model of higher education reforms is suggested. The results reveal a range of facts about challenges and opportunities to promote sustainability in higher education, within the prevailing narratives. It illustrates using the data from the timeframe of nearly four decades to highlight how neoliberal and managerial control mechanisms, which govern institutional, departmental, and individual academic, as well as student behavior, are working conversely to limit the drive and sustainability of the education agenda. The paper provides insight to the readers to understand the phenomenon of Higher Education Reforms in the context of the prevailing narratives dominating the reform agenda. The paper makes a theoretical contribution to the subject of higher educational reform in the specific context of Pakistan and postulates on improving the proposed model by integrating structural characteristics of Political and Administrative Systems in different countries affecting decisions of reforms within their contexts.