The educational ecosystem for sustainability and growth of Social Enterprises: insights from Europe

Social Enterprise (SE) has been an established field of research and training for more than two decades in EU, (EC 2020) and curricula on social enterprise today exist in the high-level educational system (HE) and Vocational Education and Training (VET), both in countries where the social enterprise is widespread and in countries where it is a new trend (Borzaga 2020). This paper reviews the provision of education and training for SE, at HE and VET level, in Italy, Greece, Ireland and Slovenia, with the aim to deepen on what themes are addressed under the topics of sustainability and growth, as well as how social impact is combined with sustainability and growth. Moreover, a focus is given to the training approaches and techniques most utilized by lecturers. The research shows that the provision of education and training in SE varies greatly. The findings identify a range of teaching contents used to address the same topic, specifically for the two issues analyzed (sustainability and growth). At the same time the awareness of the key challenges that characterized SE education programs is broadly shared.