In the context of globalization, public organizations are undergoing rapid transformation, and how to govern them scientifically has become an important research topic. As a part of public organizations, university governance is an important research direction in the field of higher education, which has been widely concerned by many scholars in the world. In order to fully understand the current status of research in this field, this article collects the literature data in the Web of Science (WoS) and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database and analyzes authoritative journals, time of publication, country and institution of publication, research topic hotspots and research frontiers through visualization software CiteSpaceV. This paper makes a multi-angle analysis of the research status in the field of university governance and makes a comparative analysis of Chinese and English literature, further explores the background and reasons for the differences between Chinese and English literature. Also, the current research status and development trends of Chinese and English research database are summarized. The results of this study can be used to determine the most influential research journals and institutions in the field of university governance research, as well as research hotspots in different periods and different research directions in this field.