SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND HIGHER EDUCATION: EXPLORING THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH (2003–2025)

Abstract

Social entrepreneurship has attracted growing interest from scholars for its significant potential for addressing complex social issues and generating social value. However, its idiosyncratic nature necessitates interdisciplinary approaches and presents novel challenges for education and training. As entrepreneurship gains importance, researchers recognise that its nature requires innovative approaches to education and training. In such context, a more comprehensive understanding of the evolution, trends and patterns of extant literature on this field is required. This study conducts a bibliometric analysis on social entrepreneurship and higher education. It uses a dataset of 124 papers selected from the Web of Science database between 2003 and May 2025. The study employs bibliometric techniques and data visualization tools, such as VOSviewer, to conduct citation analysis, co-citation analysis, co-word analysis, and bibliographic coupling network analysis. This allows for a multifaceted view of the current state of research and its advancement on social entrepreneurship in higher education. The results reveal the intellectual structure of the topic, highlighting important trends and knowledge gaps that can inform future research. The field of social entrepreneurship in education is evolving towards a more holistic and institutional understanding, demanding for future research that integrates individual, technological, and policy-level structural dimensions that shape educational ecosystems.