Higher education (HE) has traditionally been viewed as a public good that promotes societal benefits by encouraging civic engagement, educating individuals, and enhancing human capital (Boyadjieva & Ilieva-Trichkova, 2019). Over the past few decades, HE has increasingly been perceived as a private good, which implies that academic institutions and their students should bear a significant portion of the cost of HE (Altbach et al., 2009). Accordingly, its governance structures have evolved and become more varied over time. Following Brennan (2007, 2010) this chapter examines HE governance through two interconnected frameworks. First, it analyses governance by dividing it into sub-categories, including regulation and system-level elements and sub-structural elements, such as organisational and institutional decision-making. Second, it examines governance geographically to feature prominent HE governance models. Section 1 begins by defining the concepts of HE and higher education institutions (HEIs) and exploring widely accepted theories on governance. Section 2 analyses different HE governance practices in different regions that are distinctive and representative of the most popular HE governance models in the world. The chapter then focuses on three case studies that are of high relevance to Vietnam in Sect. 3. Section 4 aims to cast a spell on the global HE’s current trends, combining them with the findings of various HE governance models. This enables us to draw valuable lessons for Vietnam’s HE in Sect. 5 and further discuss them in subsequent chapters of the book.