Institutionalism in Higher Education: Indicators and Enactment from the Swiss and Saudi Prospective

Background: The Saudi higher education system is going through continuous reforms to achieve the goals set by the kingdom’s Vision 2030. To support these reforms, we research the concept of institutionalism by looking into its indicators comparatively between the Swiss and the Saudi higher education systems. Methods: A thematic analysis was performed to identify institutional indicators in organizational practices. A qualitative meta-synthesis approach was then used to identify contributions of these indicators using the PRISMA method. Results: 20 institutional indicators were identified. The contribution of these indicators was narratively synthesized from 199 studies and categorized into 7 main themes. Enactment of these indicators was present in the Swiss Federal Act in a ratio of 17:20, in comparison to a ratio of 5:20 in the Saudi higher education Order. Conclusion: Institutionalism was not found to be strongly built in the Saudi Higher Education Order.