Academic advising and tutoring policies play key roles in achieving students' satisfaction and engagement, and thereby improving students' retention and career development. However, universities do not give enough attention to developing the Student Affairs entities or advising quality. This study aims to conduct a systematic review of the literature, in order to determine the needs of UAE federal universities, with a special emphasis on the roles of academic advising and counselling in improving students' retention and satisfaction. The target population of this study consisted of related works published in peer-review journals, books and websites. A comprehensive review of the literature was conducted on a list of 28 selected manuscripts published from 2000 to 2021. The data were collected manually from the articles, by the researchers. This study draws the attention of policy-makers and advisory boards, to launch proper policies and advisory services, so that, the students of higher classes will achieve good academic performance, leading to students’ retention. Furthermore, our findings revealed that academic advising can improve the students’ satisfaction, gender identity or expression. Thus, academic advising is the groundwork for all fruitful learning institutes. This paper gives an overview of the flaws in academic advising policies and the limitations of the available tools to support the policy goals in federal universities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Consequently, further research in this subject and the implementation thereof could improve the quality of student-affair programs in the federal universities of the UAE.