This is a conceptual paper that examines service quality and student satisfaction in higher learning institutions. It presents the reviews of the literature on the service quality construct in higher education and its influence on student satisfaction. The theoretical perspective of this paper included the Gap Model of service quality and the hierarchical service quality model. The various instruments for measuring service quality in higher education have been discussed briefly with a summary of the measurement instruments by different authors and their dimensions provided. The empirical studies have indicated that there is no consensus among authors on the dimensions that should be used to evaluate service quality in the higher education sector and hence different dimensions and measurement scales have been used by different authors. This paper concludes that service quality in higher education has a significant influence on student satisfaction and therefore higher education institutions should put in place mechanisms to collect student feedback to enable them to determine the service quality dimensions of interest to their students so that they can make the necessary improvements on the relevant service quality dimensions.