Higher Education from the lens of Human Capability Approach: A Meta-Synthesis Method

Higher education has been considered as one of the centers of society's progress and the foundation for progress in other fields. Therefore, the quality of this institution and the achievement of its goals are of great importance. This shows itself even more due to the change of development paradigms from economic development to human development, because in human development, man is the center and goal of development too, and the approach that emphasizes it is called the capabilities approach. The capabilities approach provides a more complete, holistic, and transformative approach to higher education curriculum design because it is not limited by predetermined contextual needs. Looking at the importance of the subject, the current research focuses on the implications of the human capabilities approach in higher education. The present research is developmental-applied based on purpose, qualitative based on the nature of data, and documentation based on data collection methods. The research method is analytical-descriptive and the qualitative data have been collected using the meta-synthesis qualitative research method according to Barroso and Sandelowski’s seven-step method. For this purpose, by searching 16 reliable scientific databases, 1945 articles were identified between 1979 and 2022. Among all the 1945 identified original texts, 12 relevant articles were selected finally. Then the selected articles were reviewed and coded. The meta-synthesis of previous studies shows that the implications of the capabilities approach in higher education can be classified under four categories: contextual capabilities, behavioral capabilities, educational capabilities, and economic-welfare capabilities. The identified concepts (capabilities) also include 20 concepts.