This chapter focuses on external governance of higher education drawing on the key conceptual models the scholars have used to understand the changing coordination of higher education between the state, the market, higher education institutions, academic oligarchy and an increasing range of other stakeholders. We provide an overview of the contextual factors that have influenced the change in external governance since 1980s mainly focusing on European higher education systems. Here we identify a range of individual and collective as well as organisational actors involved in external governance of higher education, including non-academic actors, that expand their participation in steering universities. The chapter discusses the multi-actor and multi-level complexity of governance of higher education and proposes conceptual tools to understand this hybridity of governance arrangements in different higher education systems, pointing out the importance of context as well as policy issues discussed.