The position of student institutions in governing higher education with a general policy approach

This study aims to analyze the position of student institutions in governing higher education. The qualitative research happened in two phases. First, it employed a principled review approach in order to extract the keywords such as student and university governance, student voices at university, student and decision making at university, and self-governance of the students in valid international data centers like Science Direct, Springer, Eric, Emerald, Sage, and Online Library Wiley from 1995 to 2020. After that, 39 articles were selected through PARISMA form. In the second phase, using the three-stage thematic analysis of Walcot (2008), the selected articles were investigated. The findings regarding the student institutions in the governance of higher education were 6 primary and 13 secondary peripheral themes. These themes included para-university governance (para-university policy making and para-university management), inner-university governance (inner-university policy making and inner-university management), discourse of students (the structure of student institutions, student agency, and student role), student development (developing human resources and developing social capital of students), supportive and legal systems (supportive and encouraging systems and legal systems), and soft capacities of university (cultural values and social values). In this regard, introducing encouragements for increasing the students’ motivation for contribution, establishing student cooperatives, university culture for supporting the student contribution, and collective decision making at university were the most significant elements. Finally, some general policies for Iran’s higher education were suggested..