Objective: This review maps the scientific production on divergent thinking in higher education (2004-2024) in order to identify thematic trends, effective pedagogical strategies, and persistent research gaps affecting curricular innovation and institutional policies.

Design/methodology/approach.

The study combines a PRISMA-2020 systematic review with a dual-source bibliometric analysis. A corpus of 1024 articles and reviews was retrieved from Web of Science and Scopus. ScientoPy, VOSviewer and Biblioshiny were used to obtain indicators of productivity, collaborative networks, keyword co-occurrence and thematic evolution. Fifty highly cited studies were examined in depth to synthesize the empirical evidence.

Findings: The literature is growing at an annual rate of 20.5% and is dominated by twelve macro-themes grouped around cognitive processes, interdisciplinary pedagogies and digital environments. The United States, China and Russia lead in production and citations, while Thinking Skills and Creativity and Creativity Research Journal concentrate the greatest impact. Systemic theories that integrate personal traits, contextual resources and sociocultural validation prevail. Interdisciplinary, collaborative, and technology-enhanced interventions, including generative AI, consistently increase fluency, flexibility, and originality, although ethical and methodological challenges remain. Longitudinal data on employability are scarce.

Originality: This is the first study to triangulate PRISMA-2020 with multibase bibliometrics to span two decades of research on divergent thinking in higher education, offering a replicable protocol and an integrated agenda that bridges neurocognitive, cultural, and pedagogical perspectives.

Research limitations/implications.

The predominance of cross-sectional designs and English-language publications limits causal inference and cultural generalization; future work should incorporate longitudinal and multicultural samples.

Practical Implications: Results inform curriculum designers about evidence-based combinations-active learning, metacognitive scaffolding, and AI tools-that enhance creative cognition without sacrificing disciplinary rigor.

Social implications: Strengthening divergent thinking prepares graduates to tackle complex regional problems with original and ethically grounded solutions, thus fostering inclusive innovation ecosystems.