ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to understand the literature on social innovation in higher education as a driver of student employability in the European Economic Area. A literature search shows that there is a close relationship between university innovation (which is a form of social innovation) and student employability. A systematic review was conducted to transparently synthesize the literature on social innovation and higher education with a qualitative rather than quantitative approach, where 136 papers were selected in the final inclusion. Therefore, this chapter builds on the meta-ethnography method and lines-of-argument synthesis, which involves ‘building up a picture of the whole (e.g. system, organization, culture etc.) from studies of its parts’. The results show a deficit of empirical studies of social innovation in higher education, especially from a system perspective.
