Studying the relationships between governance, public policy and institutional performance in the field of higher education has become a great challenge for researchers, but also an attractive opportunity, given the complexity that this triad of concepts represents. The purpose of this work is to carry out a theoretical reflection on the conceptual scope of university governance and its connection with public policy and its corresponding performance, in order to specify the terminology and its most relevant sig nificance for Latin America. This research is descriptive and documentary, based on the exploration of the contemporary sociological and political literature.