Mapping the University-to-Work Transition: A Bibliometric Analysis of Higher Education Research in South Africa

South Africa exhibits high unemployment rates, similar to several other African countries. This adversely affects the graduates of the African higher education systems. Current research disparities entail the need for a concise demographical landscape of African graduates' impediments and the increasing high unemployment rate. The significance lies in the necessity to identify interventions that have the potential to reduce the unemployment rates of graduates, improving economic morale through employability. This study executed a detailed bibliometric analysis as a segment of a systematic literature review, responding to a call for enhanced higher education research in Africa relating to graduates and the labour market. The bibliometric analysis aimed to unravel and map the current outlook of literature on South African graduates and the labour market and provide recommendations for future research avenues. By searching the terms ‘university’ and ‘work’, a total of 2584 documents were extracted from the SCOPUS database and reviewed using VOSviewer. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and meta-analysis parameters were followed throughout the data collection process. The results revealed that several research avenues necessitate further inquiry to support and reduce university-to-work impediments. The findings highlight that future research should entail themes on employability, psychological outlooks, and work-integrated learning in higher education. This study contributes to the academic domain by encouraging future research scholars to minimise the knowledge gap essential to reducing a high graduate unemployment rate in developing economies. Thus, implications and recommendations arose for educational institutes and scholars to advance the body of knowledge in such a field.