In the era of the post-massification of higher education, superfluous graduates are swarming into the increasingly competitive workplace. However, faced with the labor market with over-supplying talents and full of uncertainty, graduates with university degrees are no longer entitled to a voucher for employability but only gain a pre-requisite and entry ticket to the limited seats (Gibb & Hannon, 2004). And the rolling wave of the ICT revolution with the development of artificial intelligence has demanded higher skills and left graduates with narrower space for job seeking, which has been even recently worsened by the economic downfall caused by COVID-19. However, those pressing challenges also present opportunities seized by adventurous graduates. Instead of following the regular trend of being job seekers, they opt for job creators as another career alternative, that is, to be self-employed and create new start-ups. According to the 2021 GUESS Global Report, 10.8 percent of graduates have established their ventures, and nearly 30 percent of students are in the act of creating new ones (Sieger et al., 2021). Graduate entrepreneurship (GE) has also been a significant agenda promoted by global governments as one of the remedies for the overpopulation of the crowded workplace and a vital source for the economy. Shouldering the third mission of responding to the socio-economic needs and acting as the seedbeds of qualified talents, universities are therefore urged to exert various strategies to cultivate potential graduate entrepreneurs. Given this significance, multiple studies have investigated why (the determinants of GE intentions), how (the factors of GE behaviors), and what (the outcomes of GE practices). Despite increasing academic attention, there is a lack of systematic literature review for GE research to synthesize and reflect on the current stock critically and comprehensibly. Without looking back at the achievements and deficiencies of previous GE studies, we can hardly revise, reflect, and refresh existing piles by identifying possible gaps and bridging them with promising perspectives.

Prior review studies (conducted in 2004 and 2006 separately) have provided illuminating reflections on GE literature, but surprisingly, no up-to-date reviews have emerged to portray the current GE landscape. The first GE literature review was brought up by Hannon (2004), who summarized the motivation studies of GE and concluded that there was a paucity of evaluation studies. He pointed out that researchers have failed to give robust and holistic studies to justify the mechanism of GE. Conducting a literature view on graduates' career-making and start-up, Nabi, Holden and Walmsley (2006) later revealed that GE literature was fragmented and atheoretical with incomplete and somewhat contradictory results. Specifically, a uniform standardized definition was absent. Solid theory models and longitudinal research with in-depth qualitative explanations are also desperately needed. Their studies have both briefly pointed out some crucial gaps neglected by scholars then. However, it remains unknown whether the current literature has addressed previous gaps and what’s been newly encountered and discovered after more than a decade, as the GE literature review hasn’t been updated since 2006.

Given the significance of GE and the shocking absence of a timely literature review on GE, this study takes stock of current GE literature and revisits this field with four questions:

1. Is GE a worldwide concerned topic in academics?
2. How do studies define GE and discuss its significance?
3. How do studies address the factors promoting or constraining GE?
4. How do studies discuss the measurement of outcomes of GE?

Guided by the PRISMA 2020 statement , we provide a systematic literature review of GE by analyzing 84 papers sourced from the Web of Science and Scopus from 1996 to 2023.We conducted research searching in two databases: Web of Science and Scopus. They were chosen as they both represent the leading databases containing a stream of high-quality international peer-reviewed literature in multiple disciplines. They have been adopted by various authors like van Lankveld et al. (2017) and Fellnhofer (2019) in the field of education review. Also, they enable researchers to access bibliographic information and organize citation reports for further refining and analyzing work. After the authors’ discussion, we used the following searching parameter: “graduate entrepreneurship” OR “graduate start-up*” OR “graduate startup*” OR “alumni entrepreneurship” OR “alumni start-up*” OR “alumni startup*”. We include peer-reviewed journal papers, conference papers, and review papers for more comprehensiveness of eligible studies. Meanwhile, we limit to English-written ones to better compare and synthesize results. After searching the terms in titles, abstracts, and keywords, 200 articles in total from 1996 (the earliest year GE literature showed) to 2023 (the last year GE literature was published) were found and included in our study to revisit the whole discourses of GE. To select and include more eligible pieces, this study established exclusion criteria inspired by previous works on systematic literature reviews (Schott et al., 2020; Hascher & Waber, 2021). Firstly, after removing the duplicates and papers inaccessible for whole-text reading (96 papers remained), we scrutinized the titles and abstracts of them and excluded papers if: 1. GE is not the principal and core topic but is merely mentioned as one aspect of the main topics. 2. Graduates as the main stakeholder are not emphasized but with a focus on other stakeholders (e.g., teachers, current students). After the first abstract-scanning phase, 79 papers remained for the whole-text analysis to further examine the pertinence of those papers. During the second phase, we excluded papers if they did not address any of our research questions (provide no clues or insights to our questions). Therefore, four papers were excluded as GE was merely peripherally discoursed. At the same time, 9 papers were manually added when we read the articles and identified more relevant ones. At last, 84 papers remained for systematic review.

The study found that: Firstly, despite still being dominated by UK researchers, GE has been a global academic concern. Secondly, despite substantial elaborations on the significance of GE as the economic catalyst, there is a lack of comprehensive and interdisciplinary definitions. Thirdly, researchers have empirically explained various factors influencing GE within diversified frameworks but presented scattered or controversial views on certain factors, especially on the role of universities in GE education and enhancement. Fourthly, empirical studies about the measurement of GE outcomes are shockingly rare. Fifthly, longitudinal studies are also rare to examine the transition from a student to an entrepreneur or narrate the experiences of entrepreneurs over a long period. Based on the systematic review, this study establishes a Triple Framework of GE factors and calls for 1) an interdisciplinary, cross-sectional, and intercultural approach to defining GE; 2) grounded theories and analytical frameworks of GE for examining the factors and intersection between various stakeholders; 3) more in-depth longitudinal studies to track the progress of GE; 4) a comprehensible measurement of GE outcomes across the life span.

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