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The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2023

Following our annual tussle with hundreds of studies of merit, we’ve pared them down to 10 you shouldn’t miss—from what AI can (and can’t) do to the neuroscience of brain synchrony.

For those of us hoping for a quiet, back-to-normal kind of year, the research coming out of 2023 might disappoint. A rising tide of teenage mental health issues sent researchers scurrying for answers, and the sudden ascendance of AI posed a new threat to codes of academic conduct and caused some educators to forecast the end of teaching as we know it (we’re here to dispel that myth).

There was plenty of good news in the mix—and fascinating news, too. Neuroscientists continued to push the envelope on mapping the human brain, using cutting-edge technology to get a sneak peek at the “brain synchrony” between students and teachers as they learn about complex topics, and a comprehensive review of social and emotional learning confirmed, once again, that there’s no substitute for caring, welcoming school environments.

Finally, we did our due diligence and unearthed classroom strategies that can make a big difference for students, from the use of math picture books to a better, more humane way to incorporate tests and games of knowledge into your classroom activities.

1. AI MAY CUT AN EDUCATOR’S PLANNING TIME DRAMATICALLY

In case anyone thought the jury was still out on the Turing test, which proposes a hypothetical threshold at which humans and machines respond indistinguishably to a prompt— more evidence recently came in, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell who’s testing who.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina set a “deep neural” AI model to work on a college-level anatomy and physiology textbook, after first training the software to recognize important information. The AI took stock, pondered in its fashion, and then dutifully produced 2,191 test questions tied to learning standards, which a panel of teachers judged to be “on par with human-generated questions in terms of their relevance to the learning objectives.” Remarkably, the instructors also said they’d consider adopting the machine-generated questions for their courses.

That’s spooky, but not without its silver linings. Test creation is time-consuming for teachers, and one knowledgeable educator who took AI for a test drive says that it performs well on other tasks like planning lessons, writing instructions, and even composing emails to parents. New AI-powered tools like Diffit, Curipod, and MagicSchool.ai, meanwhile, are starting to sound like revolutionary teaching aids.

Concern that the end of human teaching is one software release away is premature: Studies we’ve reviewed suggest that AI still requires a lot of fine-tuning, and in July of 2023 , researchers concluded that without human intervention, AI is atrocious at mathematics, performing poorly on open-ended problems and routinely flubbing even simple math calculations. To be useful, it turns out, AI may need us more than we need it.

2. A FASCINATING GUIDE TO BETTER QUIZZING

No one likes tests—except the three authors of a 2023 study , apparently. The trio, who have experience as teachers and researchers, sing the praises of virtually every kind of test, quiz, and knowledge game, asserting that such assessments should be frequent, low-stakes, highly engaging, and even communal. Their rationale: When properly designed and stripped of dread, tests and quizzes dramatically improve “long-term retention and the creation of more robust retrieval routes for future access,” a well-established phenomenon known as the testing effect .

The study is a fascinating, granular look at the mechanics of testing and its impacts on learning. Here are some of the highlights:

Mix it up: To maximize student engagement, quiz students frequently—but don’t let the format get stale. In their analysis, the authors endorse testing formats as varied as multiple choice, cued-recall tests, clickers, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and contests of knowledge.

Be competitive: When designing multiple-choice or true-false tests, opt for “competitive alternatives” in your answers. For example, when asking “What is the hottest terrestrial planet?,” proffer Venus , Mars , and Mercury instead of Venus , Uranus , and Saturn —because “Uranus and Saturn aren’t terrestrial planets.” Competitive alternatives require students to scrutinize all options, the authors hypothesize, leading them to retrieve and consider more learned material.

Pretest: Quizzing students on material they haven’t yet learned improves long-term performance “even if [students] are not able to answer any of those questions correctly,” according to the researchers. Notably, pretesting can also lead to “a reduction in mind wandering” during subsequent lessons.

Get communal: Asking students to take tests in groups can improve retention and motivation while reducing anxiety. Consider focusing on specific rather than open-ended questions, the authors caution, since students can sometimes “recall and remember information less accurately” when working together.

Pass it on: Teach students to self-test by “summarizing the main points from a lecture… without looking at any notes,” or by meeting in “small study groups where the students practice testing one another—an activity that many students already report doing.”

3. HOW TONE OF VOICE CHANGES CLASSROOM CULTURE

Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, subtle shifts in a teacher’s tone of voice—a sharp rise in volume or a sudden barrage of repeated instructions born of frustration—can be the first sign that something’s awry in the classroom, disturbing a fragile equilibrium and leading students to clam up or act out, a study published late in 2022 suggests.

Researchers observed as teens and preteens listened to instructions given by teachers—“I’m waiting for people to quiet down” or “It’s time to tidy up all of your belongings,” for example—delivered in warm, neutral, or controlling tones. While the effect was unintended, an authoritative tone often came off as confrontational, undermining students’ sense of competence and discouraging them from confiding in teachers. Warm, supportive tones, on the other hand, contributed to a classroom environment that reinforced learning across multiple social and academic dimensions like sense of belonging, autonomy, and enjoyment of the class. 

It takes years to find the right tonal balance, says experienced middle school teacher Kristine Napper. “Neither high expectations nor kind hearts can do the job alone,” she coaches . Instead, teachers should strive for a warm, supportive tone and then draw on that “wellspring of trust to hold students to high standards of deep engagement with course content.”

4. BRAINS THAT FIRE TOGETHER WIRE TOGETHER

In 2021, we reported that as students progressed through a computer science course, the learning material left neural fingerprints that mirrored brain activity in other students, the teacher, and experts in the field. “Students who failed to grasp the material,” we wrote, “exhibited neural signatures that were outliers; they were drifting.” But the brain patterns of students who performed well on a later test aligned strongly with other top performing students—and with the teacher and experts, too.

Intriguingly, even abstract concepts—those that lack any physical attributes—appeared to trigger similar mental representations in students’ minds, attesting to the remarkable cognitive flexibility underlying human communication and knowledge sharing.

A 2023 study using electroencephalography (EEG) largely confirms those findings. High school science teachers taught groups of young adults fitted with electrodes about science topics such as bipedalism, habitats, and lipids. Researchers found that stronger “brain synchrony” between peers—and between students and teachers—predicted better academic performance on follow-up tests, both immediately and a full week later.

Together, these studies underscore the importance of scholarly expertise and direct instruction, but also hint at the downstream power of peer-to-peer and social learning. As knowledge passes from teachers to learners to greater and lesser degrees—some students grasp material quickly, others more slowly—an opportunity to distribute the work of learning emerges. When advanced students are paired with struggling peers, assisted by nudges from the teacher, groups of students might eventually converge around an accurate, common understanding of the material.

5. IN SUM, MATH PICTURE BOOKS WORK

The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words—and two are worth two thousand—might be expressed, mathematically, as a simple multiplication formula. But can reading math picture books really multiply learning?

A 2023 review of 16 studies concluded that math books like Are We There Yet, Daddy? and Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi improved student engagement and attitudes toward math; strengthened kids’ grasp of math representations like graphs or physical models; and boosted performance on tasks like counting to 20, understanding place value, and calculating diameters. In early childhood, in particular, math picture books worked wonders—one study found that young students “tend to anticipate and guess what will happen next, resulting in high engagement, aroused interest in understanding the problems, and curiosity in finding solutions”—but even middle school students seemed mesmerized by math read-alouds.

Importantly, math picture books weren’t a substitute for procedural fluency or mathematical practice. Typically, the authors noted, teachers bracketed math units with picture books, introducing a mathematical concept “in order to prepare [students] for the upcoming practice and activities,” or, alternatively, used them to review material at the end of the lesson.

6. TO IMPROVE STUDENT WRITING, REDUCE FEEDBACK (AND PUT THE ONUS ON KIDS)

It’s hard to move the needle on student writing. Hours of close reading followed by the addition of dozens of edifying margin notes can swallow teacher weekends whole, but there’s no guarantee students know how to use the feedback productively.

In fact, without guidance, revisions tend to be superficial, a new study suggests—students might correct typos and grammatical mistakes, for example, or make cursory adjustments to a few ideas, but leave it at that. A promising, time-saving alternative is to deploy rubrics, mentor texts, and other clarifying writing guidelines.

In the study, high school students were graded on the clarity, sophistication, and thoroughness of their essays before being split into groups to test the effectiveness of various revision strategies. Students who consulted rubrics that spelled out the elements of an excellent essay—a clear central thesis, support for the claim, and cohesive overall structure, for example—improved their performance by a half-letter grade while kids who read mentor texts boosted scores by a third of a letter grade.

Rubrics and mentor texts are reusable, “increase teachers’ efficient use of time,” and “enhance self-feedback” in a way that can lead to better, more confident writers down the line, the new research suggests.

7. A NEW THEORY ABOUT THE TEEN MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS

Parents, teachers, and medical professionals are wringing their hands over the alarming, decades-long rise in teenage mental health issues, including depression, feelings of “ persistent hopelessness ,” and drug addiction.

The root causes remain elusive—cell phones and social media are prime suspects—but a sprawling 2023 study offers another explanation that’s gaining traction: After scouring surveys, data sets, and cultural artifacts, researchers theorized that a primary cause is “a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults.”

Scholarly reviews of historical articles, books, and advice columns on child rearing depict an era when young children “walked or biked to school alone,” and contributed to their “family’s well being” and “community life” through meaningful chores and jobs. If that all feels vaguely mythical, data collected over the last 50 years reveals a correlation: frank admissions by parents that their children play outdoors independently less than they did, and significant drops in the number of kids who walk, bike, or bus to school alone or are allowed to cross busy roads by themselves. In the U.S., for example, a government survey showed that 48 percent of K–8 students walked to school in 1969, but by 2009 only 13 percent did.

Risky play and unsupervised outdoor activities, meanwhile, which might “protect against the development of phobias” and reduce “future anxiety by increasing the person’s confidence that they can deal effectively with emergencies,” are often frowned upon. That last point is crucial, because dozens of studies suggest that happiness in childhood, and then later in adolescence, is driven by internal feelings of “autonomy, competence, and relatedness”—and independent play, purposeful work, and important roles in classrooms and families are vital, early forms of practice.

Whatever the causes, young children seem to sense that something’s off. In one 2017 study , kindergartners who viewed images of fun activities routinely struck pictures that included adults from the category of play, rejecting the role of grown-ups in a domain they clearly saw as their own.

8. DIRECT INSTRUCTION AND INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING ARE COMPLEMENTARY

It’s an often-fiery but ultimately dubious debate: Should teachers employ direct instruction, or opt for inquiry-based learning?

At its core, direct instruction often conveys information “by lecturing and by giving a leading role to the teacher,” researchers explain in a 2023 study examining the evidence supporting both approaches. Critics typically focus solely on its passive qualities, a straw-man argument that ignores activities such as note-taking, practice quizzes, and classroom discussions. Opponents of inquiry-based learning, meanwhile, characterize it as chaotic, akin to sending students on a wild goose chase and asking them to discover the laws of physics on their own—though it can actually unlock “deep learning processes such as elaboration, self-explanation, and metacognitive strategies,“ the researchers say.

Both sides misrepresent what teachers actually do in classrooms. Instructional models are “often combined in practice,” the researchers note, and inquiry-based learning is usually supported with direct instruction. Teachers might begin a lesson by leading a review of key concepts, for example, and then ask students to apply what they’re learning in unfamiliar contexts. 

Let the debate rage on. Teachers already know that factual fluency and the need to struggle, flail, and even hit dead-ends are integral to learning. Teaching is fluid and complex and spools out in real time; it resists every effort to reduce it to a single strategy or program that works for all kids, in all contexts.

9. A TRULY MASSIVE REVIEW FINDS VALUE IN SEL—AGAIN

It’s déjà vu all over again. The researcher Joseph Durlak, who put social and emotional learning on the map with his 2011 study that concluded that SEL programs boosted academic performance by an impressive 11 percentile points, was back at it in 2023—working with an ambitious new team, led by Yale professor Christina Cipriano, on a similar mission.

The group just published a comprehensive meta-analysis that surveyed a whopping 424 studies involving over half a million K–12 students, scrutinizing school-based SEL programs and strategies such as mindfulness, interpersonal skills, classroom management, and emotional intelligence. The findings: Students who participated in such programs experienced “improved academic achievement, school climate, school functioning, social emotional skills, attitudes, and prosocial and civic behaviors,” the researchers concluded.

Intriguingly, SEL remained a powerful driver of better cultures and student outcomes into the middle and high school years, a reminder that there’s no cutoff point for building relationships, teaching empathy, and making schools inclusive and welcoming.

While politicians continue to stoke controversy on the topic, there’s actually widespread support for SEL, as long as it’s connected to better academic outcomes. A 2021 Thomas B. Fordham Institute survey revealed that parents reacted negatively to classroom instruction labeled “social and emotional learning,” but were favorably disposed when a single clause was added—calling it “social-emotional & academic learning” turned the tide and secured parental buy-in.

10. MORE EVIDENCE FOR MOVING PAST “FINDING THE MAIN IDEA”

In the United States, the teaching of reading comprehension has ping-ponged between skills-based and knowledge-based approaches. In 2019, things appeared to come to a head: While reading programs continued to emphasize transferable skills like “finding the main idea” or “making inferences,” the author Natalie Wexler published The Knowledge Gap , an influential takedown of skills-based methods, and a large 2020 study from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute concurred, noting that “exposing kids to rich content in civics, history, and law” taught reading more effectively than skills-based approaches.

Now a pair of new, high-quality studies—featuring leading researchers and encompassing more than 5,000 students in 39 schools—appears to put the finishing touches on a decades-long effort to push background knowledge to the forefront of reading instruction.

In a Harvard study , 3,000 elementary students participated in a yearlong literacy program focused on the “knowledge rich” domains of social studies and science, exploring the methods used to study past events, for example, or investigating how animals evolve to survive in different habitats. Compared to their counterparts in business-as-usual classes, the “knowledge based” readers scored 18 percent higher on general reading comprehension. Background knowledge acts like a scaffold, the researchers explained, helping students “connect new learning to a general schema and transfer their knowledge to related topics.” In the other study , a team of researchers, including leading experts David Grissmer, Daniel Willingham, and Chris Hulleman, examined the impact of the “Core Knowledge” program on 2,310 students in nine lottery-based Colorado charter schools from kindergarten to sixth grade. The approach improved reading scores by 16 percentile points, and if implemented nationally, the researchers calculated, might catapult U.S. students from 15th to fifth place on international reading tests.

The pendulum is swinging, but the researchers caution against overreach: There appear to be “two separate but complementary cognitive processes involved in development and learning: ‘skill building’ and ‘knowledge accumulation,’” they clarified. We may have the balance out of whack, but to develop proficient readers, you need both.

2023 education highlights: Keeping up the momentum to transform learning

International Day of Education 2023 dedicated to Afghan girls and women

UNESCO dedicated this year's International Day of Education on 24 January to girls and women in Afghanistan who have been deprived of their right to pursue secondary and higher education. The Organization renewed its call to immediately restore their fundamental right to education. “No country in the world should bar women and girls from receiving an education,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay. “The international community has the responsibility to ensure that the rights of Afghan girls and women are restored without delay. The war against women must stop.” 

In Afghanistan’s Logar province, most girls and women are illiterate. Even before the decision of the de-facto authorities to suspend girls’ access to beyond primary education, most families did not let their girls go to school. Today, over 1,000 women and young girls aged 15 to 45 are learning how to read, write and calculate for the first time in their lives through UNESCO’s Community-based Basic General Literacy Classes. During UNESCO’s visit to two literacy classes , women and girls shared their motivations, challenges and inspirations for attending the classes. Nationwide, the Organization is currently reaching over 40,000 illiterate and semi-literate youth and adults – over 60% of whom are women – in 20 provinces. 

Supporting learners and teachers in Ukraine

UNESCO and Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science launched an online training in digital pedagogy for 50,000 teachers, while the education of many Ukrainian students is still disrupted by the war. They are also training 15,000 school psychologists to withstand the impact of the war on the mental health of Ukrainian learners and teachers. “Since February 2022, UNESCO has continuously supported Ukrainian teachers to ensure that students continue learning in the midst of war,” said UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education Stefania Giannini. “I pay tribute to their work, resilience and continued dedication. As the new academic year has just begun, UNESCO reaffirms its commitment to them. Because education is the cornerstone on which Ukraine's future is built.”   Read more    

Monitoring country commitments made at the Transforming Education Summit

The latest UNESCO data shows that the global number of out-of-school children has risen by 6 million since 2021 and now totals 250 million. The figures, compiled by the Global Education Monitoring Report and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, reveal that education progress continues to stagnate globally. The annual finance gap for helping low and lower-middle income countries achieve their national education targets is almost US $100 billion. UNESCO remains committed to supporting countries and partners to acquire the financing needed to meet their goals. The Organization is also monitoring country commitments made at the UN Transforming Education Summit in 2022 through its new dashboard . Read more

Urgent call for appropriate use of technology in learning and global guidance on generative AI in education

UNESCO’s 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report on technology in education highlights the lack of appropriate governance and regulation. It urges countries to set their own terms for the way technology is designed and used in education so that it never replaces in-person, teacher-led instruction, and supports the shared objective of quality education for all. The report proposes four questions that policy-makers and educational stakeholders should reflect upon as technology is being deployed in education. Read more

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools have far-reaching implications for education and research. Yet the education sector today is largely unprepared for the ethical and pedagogical integration of these powerful and rapidly evolving technologies, as UNESCO Assistant Director-General Stefania Giannini reiterated in her think piece . UNESCO developed the first-ever global guidance on GenAI in education. Launched during UNESCO’s flagship Digital Learning Week , it calls on countries to quickly implement appropriate regulations, policies, and human capacity development, for ensuring a human-centred vision of GenAI for education and research. Read more

UNESCO calls for an upgrade of teachers’ status to reduce the global shortage

“We must better value, better train and better support,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay on World Teachers’ Day (5 October). UNESCO and the Teacher Task Force’s first global report shows that globally, 44 million teachers are still needed to achieve the goal of providing primary and secondary education for all by 2030. This includes a demand for seven out of ten teachers at the secondary level and a need to replace over half of the existing teachers leaving the profession. The problem is not only one of funding, but also the unattractiveness of the profession. Read more

UNESCO adopts landmark guidance on education’s cross-cutting role in promoting peace

On 20 November 2023, the 194 UNESCO Member States adopted the Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development at UNESCO’s General Conference . This is the only global standard-setting instrument that lays out how education should be used to bring about lasting peace and foster human development through 14 guiding principles. For the past two years, UNESCO has been revising this visionary tool to ensure it responds to today's greatest challenges and future shocks. Read more  

UNESCO at COP28: Making education the long-term solution to the climate crisis

UNESCO is accelerating climate change education and greening initiatives through its coordinating role of the  Greening Education Partnership  and extensive work on  education for sustainable development . At COP28, UNESCO played a key role in the various dialogues on accelerating climate change education and emphasized the significance of sustainable learning in fostering long-term solutions for the climate crisis. The Organization presented at the COP the drafts of two new normative and groundbreaking resources: A global curriculum guidance for climate change education; and a green schools quality standards, which will be finalized and rolled-out next year. A major highlight of the gathering was launch of the Declaration for Climate Change and Education , focused on adaptation, mitigation and investment – which was signed and endorsed by 41 countries. Read more  

Exploring how rights should adapt as education evolves

The world has considerably changed since the key treaties on the right to education were conceived and adopted over half a century ago. Education can no longer be only confined to traditional classrooms and textbooks but has expanded to encompass lifelong and life-wide learning. UNESCO's Initiative on the evolving right to education launched its formal dialogue in December to explore how international human rights instruments can be reinforced and further developed to address today's needs and challenges. Read more  

Looking into 2024, the  International Day of Education will be celebrated on 24 January under the theme “learning for lasting peace”. The world is seeing a surge of violent conflicts paralleled by an alarming rise of discrimination, racism, xenophobia, and hate speech. An active commitment to peace is more urgent today than ever: Education is central to this endeavor, as underlined by the  UNESCO Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development .

Key UNESCO publications on education in 2023

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The Top 20 Education Next Articles of 2023

Education Next

While in some respects, 2023 felt like the year when life finally returned to normal after the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, in reality the recovery has only just begun and will continue into the foreseeable future. This is especially true in education, where the effects of pandemic-era school closures, learning loss, mental health crises, and federal spending will impact an entire generation of students and educators. Scarcely an article published by Education Next this year didn’t contain some mention of the pandemic, the fallout, or the uncertain educational landscape we find ourselves in as a result.

Indeed, the second most-read article of the year (to the pleasant surprise of everyone at our publication) had student achievement expert Tom Loveless decrying the skewed priorities of the new California Math Framework as a local problem with national implications for the plummeting math performance among American K–12 students. Education writer Wayne D’Orio’s report on student behavior resonated with readers who seek better solutions for responding to the trend of worsening misconduct in schools. And Doug Lemov, who last year claimed the most-read crown with his article on cell phones in schools, gave another brilliant turn in 2023 with a flashing-red warning about the repercussions of declining expectations and rising parity in schools on our national security.

From one disruptive event to another, the explosion of ChatGPT and other generative-AI tools onto the scene was also top of mind among our contributors and readers. As highlighted in our companion Top 10 Blog Posts of 2023 , the burgeoning technology of artificial intelligence is already causing a paradigm shift among education experts, who are struggling to stay abreast of developments and integrate them appropriately. For this reason, John Bailey’s tremendously helpful primer on AI quickly became the most-viewed Education Next article in 2023. Bailey dispels some fears, acknowledges some challenges, and voices much genuine excitement about the potential of AI in education. As he related to senior editor Paul E. Peterson, “Think of it as a very smart, eager-to-please intern.”

The full top 20 list is here:

1. AI in Education The leap into a new era of machine intelligence carries risks and challenges, but also plenty of promise By John Bailey

2. California’s New Math Framework Doesn’t Add Up It would place Golden State 6th graders years behind the rest of the world—and could eventually skew education in the rest of the U.S., too By Tom Loveless

3. To Fix Students’ Bad Behavior, Stop Punishing Them Collaborative methods for handling misconduct make their way to the classroom By Wayne D’Orio

4. To Teach Better Writing, Don’t Ban Artificial Intelligence. Instead, Embrace it. By inviting ChatGPT into the classroom instead of locking it out, schools can push students toward independent thinking in a way that doesn’t signal mistrust. By Michael B. Horn and Daniel Curtis

5. PISA: Mission Failure With so much evidence from student testing, why do education systems continue to struggle? By Montese Gomendio

6. Your Neighborhood School Is a National Security Risk Student achievement and merit are losing prospects in the era of “everybody wins” By Doug Lemov

7. Supreme Court Opens a Path to Religious Charter Schools But the trail ahead holds twists and turns By Nicole Stelle Garnett

8. Apprenticeships on the Rise A burgeoning alternative challenges the college-for-all mentality By Patrick O’Donnell

9. Student Loan Payment Pause Benefits High-Income Households the Most With forgiveness uncertain, struggling borrowers are unprotected from risk By Diego Briones, Eileen Powell and Sarah Turner

10. Gifted and Talented Programs Don’t Cause School Segregation Uneven enrollments, but minor impacts on racial separation By Owen Thompson

11. The Great Unbundling Is the parents’ rights movement opening a new frontier in school choice? By Joseph Olchefske and Steven Adamowski

12. Wisconsin’s Act 10, Flexible Pay, and the Impact on Teacher Labor Markets Student test scores rise in flexible-pay districts. So does a gender gap for teacher compensation. By Barbara Biasi

13. The Fine Art of School Engagement How expanding arts education affects learning, behavior, and social-emotional growth By Daniel H. Bowen and Brian Kisida

14. A Distorted Lens on the Teaching Profession Though a few themes do ring particularly true By Daniel Buck

15. The Nation’s Charter Report Card First-ever state ranking of charter student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress By Paul E. Peterson and M. Danish Shakeel

16. Comparing Online and AI-Assisted Learning: A Student’s View An 8th grader reviews traditional Khan Academy and its AI-powered tutor, Khanmigo By Daphne Goldstein

17. How Teachers Unions Became a Political Powerhouse A nuanced look at the role of unions in education policy By Daniel DiSalvo

18. Resisting the Youth Sports Industrial Complex Children’s sports are corrupted, but parents don’t have to play along By Jonathan V. Last

19. As Many More States Enact Education Savings Accounts, Implementation Challenges Abound ESAs increase choice for families but leave administrators asking: Are pizza ovens, pianos permitted expenses? By Caroline Hendrie

20. The Evolving Science of How We Read Survey has lots about eye-movement measurement, less about comprehension By Natalie Wexler

— Education Next

P.S. You can find the Top 20  Education Next articles of 2022 here , 2021 here ,  2020 here ,  2019 here ,  2018 here ,  2017 here ,  2016 here ,  2015 here ,  2014 here  and  2013 here .

P.P.S. you can find the Top 10 Education Next blog posts of 2023 here .

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We Recommend You Read

To Fix Students’ Bad Behavior, Stop Punishing Them

Collaborative methods for handling misconduct make their way to the classroom

by Wayne D’Orio

Your Neighborhood School Is a National Security Risk

Student achievement and merit are losing prospects in the era of “everybody wins”

by Doug Lemov

More Evidence that the California Math Framework Cites Flawed Research

Stanford summer camp study is dropped after criticism

by Tom Loveless

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14 Charts that Changed the Way We Looked at America’s Schools in 2023

From absenteeism to grade inflation, this research captured the realities that shaped the k–12 landscape this year..

For K–12 education, 2023 was a year spent over a threshold. 

Schools had one foot in the shutdown era, still struggling to restore a sense of normalcy that disappeared in 2020. A steep rise in behavioral and disciplinary issues, which many teachers hoped would be only the temporary product of COVID’s generational disruption to routines, stayed with us. Millions of kids have remained separated from their local schools — not because they’re prevented by public health measures from entering the building, but because they’re simply choosing not to attend classes. And across a whole range of academic subjects, actual student learning is lower and slower than it was before the pandemic.

Meanwhile, school systems are adapting to trends and technologies that have arisen just over the past few years. Districts are spending billions of dollars to establish or expand tutoring programs, which may be America’s best tool to combat learning loss, while AI platforms like ChatGPT are transforming the way instruction can be delivered (and challenging schools’ ability to keep ahead of cheating). 

And researchers continue to ask all the questions that have traditionally set the parameters of America’s K–12 agenda: Why do student populations self-segregate? Is it better for kids to be assigned to tough or easy graders? How much do teacher training programs really help? Have charters caught up to traditional public schools?

As we do every year, The 74 has compiled a year-end inventory of the most fascinating discoveries, insights, and ambiguities that came out of education research in 2023.

Welcome to the year in charts.

Student absenteeism is out of control

You could spend a lot of time simply tallying the aspects of student life that COVID made worse: significantly diminished achievement, lower odds of graduating on time, escalating behavioral challenges, and fewer applications to college. But the most dangerous consequence might be its effects on how often children came to school.

According to data collected by Stanford University Professor Thomas Dee, the proportion of K–12 students who were chronically absent — i.e., who missed 10 percent or more of the school year — nearly doubled during the pandemic, vaulting from 14.8 percent in 2019 to 28.3 percent in 2022. Extrapolated across all schools, that means an additional 6.5 million kids became chronically absent following COVID. Every state Dee studied saw an increase of at least 4 percentage points, but those with higher pre-pandemic rates of absence experienced the largest jumps.

The findings jibe with those of other alarming research on attendance. An analysis from Johns Hopkins University’s Everybody Graduates Center and the advocacy group Attendance Works, covered by The 74’s Linda Jacobson in October, showed that in 2021–22, two-thirds of American students attended a school where at least 20 percent of students were chronically absent. In over half of all high schools, chronic absenteeism rates topped 30 percent that year. 

Catch-up learning hit a wall last year

But are kids (at least, the ones actually showing up) regaining the ground they lost since 2020? According to much of the testing data that emerged this year, the answer is no — or at least, nowhere near quickly enough.

In a July report , researchers from the nonprofit testing organization NWEA combed through nearly seven million children’s scores on the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment , which is administered both in the fall and the spring to measure how much students learn during the year. But test takers in the 2022–23 academic year made markedly less progress in key subjects than comparable elementary and middle schoolers who sat for the exam before the pandemic, with growth in reading and math falling by as much as 19 percent and 15 percent, respectively. Only third-graders exceeded the pre-COVID learning averages. 

The stalled momentum was directly cited in the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s dispatch on “State of the American Student,” which distilled a host of worrying trends and warned that America has little time left to reset the trajectory for millions of adolescents. According to ongoing indicators like the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which released long-run scores for 13-year-olds this spring, average performance in math and reading has been set back to levels last seen decades ago.

Even if schools and families feel like they’re through with the pandemic, the pandemic — and the harsh blow it has dealt to kids — isn’t done with us. 

Virtual tutoring can work

Thankfully, states and districts aren’t sitting on their hands in the face of learning loss. Supported by billions of dollars of federal funds, many have invested heavily in tutoring programs that promise to help struggling children overcome the challenges imposed by past school closures and virtual instruction. The question is whether those efforts work for enough students to justify their cost — and according to data generated by the National Student Support Accelerator , a Stanford initiative devoted to studying the effects of tutoring, there is reason for hope.

In October, the Accelerator circulated a paper showing impressive results from OnYourMark , a fully virtual program provided to developing readers. The study found that among 1,000 students enrolled in Texas charter schools, participating in OnYourMark resulted in kindergartners gaining the equivalent of 26 extra days of learning in letter sounds and first graders receiving 55 additional days of sound decoding. The news is particularly encouraging in that it shows a path to success for virtual tutoring, which has often been shown to be far less effective than in-person instruction. 

Grade inflation got worse during the pandemic

As the chaotic transition to online learning got underway in 2020, schools had to decide how they would judge the work of students cut off from their teachers and classmates. Many opted for more lenient policies , including eliminating F grades and granting credit for late or incomplete work , out of a desire to avoid more punitive measures during a crisis. 

It’s difficult to chart the average impact of the shift across thousands of school districts, but the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) recently released a brief focusing on a decade of student records in Washington State. The picture was stark: While the average middle and high school GPA for math rose by 0.11 points between 2011 and 2019, it got a boost three times that size — one-third of a GPA point, or about the difference between a C-plus and a B-minus — between 2019 and 2021. 

In general, wrote CALDER director and American Institutes for Research vice president Dan Goldhaber, the relationship between student grades and their scores on state standardized tests “has diminished over time,” particularly in math. A similar pattern is suggested by the annual release of ACT results , which show scores remaining largely flat in recent years even as students’ self-reported high school grades have climbed. And just like with price inflation, GPAs that soared during the pandemic still haven’t fully come back to earth.

Tough grading has its advantages

So what are the effects of higher course marks? Several papers released this year indicate that they can be surprisingly negative.

In a paper circulated this fall, a trio of researchers explored the consequences of a statewide switch to more lenient grading standards undertaken in North Carolina  in 2014. The policy was meant to make grades more comparable between school districts, but in effect, it also lowered the threshold for each letter grade in high schools. It also seemed to affect various student groups quite differently. As expected, the highest-achieving kids received higher grades (though only in their freshman year), but disturbingly, struggling students didn’t receive a similar bump. They also seemed to disengage from school, accruing substantially more absences than students who weren’t exposed to the looser standards; over time, those absences likely hurt their learning, as measured by relatively lower scores on the ACT.

If easier grading holds the potential to hurt attendance and widen achievement gaps, the opposite may also be true. In a study that also focused on North Carolina schools, American University Professor Seth Gershenson discovered that eighth and ninth graders assigned to math teachers with relatively tougher grading standards later saw higher math scores throughout high school. And far from validating fears that hard classes make kids tune out, those students were also less likely to be absent from class than their peers. 

COVID hit social studies too

Much of the concern over learning loss is focused on weakened performance on the core disciplines of math and reading. In fact, the academic harm was widely dispersed. 

The National Assessment of Educational Progress — a federal standardized test often called the Nation’s Report Card — only measures proficiency in social studies every four years. The exam’s latest results , revealed in May, showed that eighth graders’ average history scores fell by five points; civics scores fell by two points, the first decline in the history of the test. All told, the results for both have fallen to levels last seen in the early 1990s, the latest evidence that COVID has triggered a generational reversal in knowledge acquisition.

The swoon came amid a national debate over how to teach about American history and government, with states like Virginia initiating significant overhauls of their academic standards. But the phenomenon appears to be international in scope: Results from the International Civic and Citizenship Education study , which tests over 80,000 eighth graders across 22 industrialized countries on civic knowledge, showed that large numbers of test takers couldn’t answer questions about election fairness or democratic governance. Only 55 percent of respondents said they felt their nation’s governmental system “works well.”

Choice might be good for public schools

The explosive growth of school vouchers and education savings accounts, which allow families to spend public funds on private education, has dominated the school choice debate this year. Public school choice (i.e., charters and open enrollment policies), while also controversial, has receded somewhat from conversation.

But a working paper released this summer indicates that, in addition to providing more instructional options to families that want them, intra-choice can improve learning throughout wider communities. University of Chicago economist Christopher Campos and data scientist Caitlin Kearns scrutinized Los Angeles’s Zones of Choice initiative , which allows families within designated neighborhoods to select among multiple high schools rather than send their children to the one nearest their home. Participation in the program, they learned, significantly increases students’ English exam scores and boosts their enrollment rate at four-year colleges by 25 percent. Those gains were concentrated among schools exposed to the most competition and those that previously performed the worst, strongly hinting that inclusion in the Zones pushed them to hold onto students by improving their offerings. 

A different study of choice in North Carolina yielded broadly similar results, though with caveats. Focusing on the state’s decision to lift its cap on charter schools in 2012, the paper’s authors revealed that the move incrementally improved public schools’ value-added scores as measured by state standardized tests; that improvement, while small in scale, generated huge value in the aggregate, as the study concluded that the average public high schooler’s lifetime wages were lifted by $1,500 by allowing more charters to open. As in the Los Angeles study, the promising effects seem to have come about through competition for students.

Dispiritingly, however, the impact on pupils who actually enrolled in the charter schools after the cap was lifted was negative , perhaps because the newly established schools tended to employ more “non-traditional” models (e.g., project-based or experiential learning, such as Montessori) that weren’t as successful as existing charter options.

No one said this stuff was simple. 

Charters aren’t underperforming anymore

Charter schools have been around for over 30 years. For most of that time, their advocates and detractors have argued passionately over just how effective they really are at improving academic achievement. The primary arbiter of those disputes, most often, has been Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), which has released a series of studies over more than a decade comparing the performance of charter students with those enrolled at district public schools.

In the first few editions, those reports showed the newer schools lagging behind their traditional counterparts — evidence that the sector’s opponents’ cited frequently throughout the fierce school reform battles of the Obama era. But the latest iteration — CREDO’s first national evaluation in a decade, including data on 1.8 million students across 31 states and cities — calculated that charter students receive the equivalent of 16 extra days of learning in literacy, and six extra days of math, than students at the local public schools they would have otherwise attended. The edge, while decidedly slight, masks larger variation among subgroups: Black students gained an average of 35 extra days of reading growth and 29 extra days of math, equal to more than a month of supplemental instruction.

Not all charters are created equal, however. An article published last month in the journal Education Next , and covered by The 74’s Greg Toppo, compared the performance of charter sectors in each state based on their students’ performance on NAEP. Somewhat surprisingly, the state with the top showing was Alaska, where charter students score an average of 32 points higher on the test than the national average for charter school students. Their peers in Pennsylvania, Oregon, Michigan, Tennessee, and Hawaii weren’t so fortunate, with each scoring at least 21 points lower than the national average.

Teacher prep can be rethought on the fly

Starting in spring 2020, Massachusetts launched a grand experiment: Concerned that the tumultuous working conditions of the pandemic would discourage young people from becoming teachers, the state began issuing emergency credentials to teaching candidates even if they hadn’t completed the necessary coursework to be licensed. Over the next three years, almost 20,000 such licenses were granted to instructors who worked full-time while simultaneously working to meet their licensure requirements.

Boston University’s Wheelock Education Policy Center has followed the progress of those early-career teachers. Their analysis, laid out in multiple reports , presents a quietly stunning observation: As measured through a combination of school-level performance evaluations, principal questionnaires, and student scores on standardized tests, the emergency-licensed teachers perform similarly to their colleagues who completed traditional teacher preparation programs. Students assigned to them were not disadvantaged in learning in spite of their unconventional path to the classroom. What’s more, by the program’s second year, one-quarter of emergency licensees were non-white — vastly more than the statewide average in Massachusetts.

The notion that aspiring educators can thrive in the profession without reaching it through the traditional channels isn’t a new one; Teach for America and other alternative credentialing programs have existed for decades, yielding some real successes during that period. But the Massachusetts experience illustrates some of the specific benefits of dropping licensure requirements during a crisis. Namely, making entry more flexible (and shaving off the years of study and thousands of dollars in tuition that often act as a deterrent to otherwise qualified candidates) can produce a more diverse and no less effective workforce.

More good news on third-grade retention

Legislation around the science of reading has swept through dozens of states over the last decade. In part, the political success of the new literacy agenda is due to the popularity of most of its planks: evidence-backed curricula, teacher coaching, and additional resources for kids and schools that need them.

By contrast, third-grade retention — holding back students for a year if they’re not on track to succeed by the end of that crucial threshold — plays the role of the bad cop. In spite of the existing evidence that struggling elementary schoolers in states like Florida and Indiana can see large benefits from repeating a grade, many parents and teachers still consider that step too punitive.

But according to a paper circulated in June , the upsides of the approach extend in some unexpected directions. In a study of 12 large school districts in Florida, which has had a retention policy related to reading scores for over 20 years, researchers found that third graders made significant gains in scores for both math and reading after being held back. Even more promising, targeted students’ younger siblings also saw larger learning gains than the brothers and sisters of comparable students who weren’t retained. 

It’s unclear what feature of Florida’s law led to the positive “spillover effects,” but study co-author Umut Özek told The 74 that families might be responding in an advantageous way to the experience of their older children. “When you get a signal that says, ‘Your kid is not performing at a level that will allow them to be promoted to fourth grade,’ that’s a very clear signal that will likely induce a response from parents.”

Asian students in, white families out

“White flight,” as it’s usually understood, refers to the phenomenon of working- and middle-class white families decamping from inner cities in the 1960s and ‘70s as a response to increased crime, deteriorating local economies, and growing numbers of African American residents. It’s a hotly contested phenomenon , but many in the education policy world blame it for contributing to school segregation and shrinking the tax base of urban school districts.

This year, superstar researcher Leah Boustan applied the concept to a different setting. A student of prior racial migrations at the city level, the Princeton economist studied the movement of Asian-American students into 152 California school districts, all of them suburban and relatively affluent. The sizable growth over the decades of the early 21st century appeared to generate its own version of white flight — more specifically, for every Asian student who enrolled in local schools, 1.5 white students left. 

The departures weren’t correlated with any other demographic changes. But accompanying survey evidence convinced Boustan and her collaborators that they also likely weren’t triggered by racial animus. Instead, they pointed to white parents’ wariness of academic competition with Asian-American kids, who out-achieve other student categories in virtually every academic metric. 

“Someone is showing up in the district who scores better than they do,” Boustan said in an interview with The 74. “In relative terms, the white kids are generally falling behind.”

Extracurricular activities show large racial gaps

The most significant education development of 2023 may well have been the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard , the case that prohibited the use of racial preferences in college admissions. The end of affirmative action as we’ve known it, occurring just as colleges move en masse away from the use of entrance exams like the SAT and ACT, means that admissions decisions will increasingly be made on the basis of other parts of the application package.

One of those will undoubtedly be extracurricular activities — the menu of clubs, productions, athletics, and volunteer opportunities that high schoolers have learned to embrace in order to be considered well-rounded. But if their aim is to foster diversity while adhering to new legal constraints, colleges might think twice before relying on them too heavily. According to an April study drawing on nearly 6 million college applications from the 2018–19 and 2019–20 admissions cycles, participation in extracurriculars is surprisingly race-specific. White, Asian-American, and wealthy students, along with those attending private high schools, reported engaging in many more activities than their African American, Latino, American Indian, and low-income classmates. The activities they choose also tend to feature more leadership roles and confer more honors, both of which could help win a university slot.

If race, test scores, and extracurriculars are reduced in prominence, however, it’s difficult to say what will take their place. Separate campaigns have been waged against the use of admissions essays, which have been found to favor wealthier students, and undergraduate letters of admission , which often leverage social capital that disadvantaged kids don’t have. In the end, admissions officers might be left throwing darts at the wall.

Flexible pay has unintended consequences

The Act 10 legislation, passed in 2011 by Wisconsin Republicans, ignited one of the most furious school reform controversies of its era. By stripping teachers of the right to collectively bargain over salary schedules and benefits, then-Gov. Scott Walker dealt a massive blow to teachers’ unions, perhaps the most influential progressive force in state politics. It was also a provocation that some credit with catalyzing the revived organizing movement of the last half-decade, which has seen a rash of teacher strikes and renewed hostility to other planks of the reform agenda.

In a study published in the education journal Education Next , Yale economist Barbara Biasi looked at the transformative effects of Act 10 on teacher labor markets, which suddenly became much more flexible as schools could opt to pay different salaries to teachers on the basis of either career tenure or classroom performance. That had some positive effects for individual districts: Younger, more effective teachers were able to win large pay increases by moving to areas where their lack of seniority wasn’t held against them.

But the state also saw an unpalatable side effect. In part because younger female teachers are more reluctant than their male counterparts to negotiate aggressively for higher pay, flexible-pay districts also saw a newfound gender wage gap begin to open. Though small on average, Biasi found that the cumulative effect over a teacher’s career could amount to an entire year’s pay.

Gifted education does little to increase segregation 

The last few years have brought a clash between advocates for educational equity and proponents of gifted education. That battle — over gifted programs’ place in the K–12 portfolio, and whether all kids truly have access to them — has largely played out in major urban districts like New York and San Francisco, where both prestigious exam schools and accelerated learning more generally have been criticized for their disproportionately tiny number of seats offered to Hispanic and African American pupils.

But several studies recently emerged that tell a different story. One , published in Education Next by Williams College economist Owen Thompson, examines the effect of K–6 gifted programs on the racial makeup of kindergarten and elementary classrooms. Examining enrollment information for nearly 47,000 public schools around the United States, Thompson found that the special sections are disproportionately made up of white and Asian students. But because they are so small in scope, they make a negligible impact on the overall demographics of the schools in which they are housed. In fact, eliminating every such program would not significantly change the exposure of different student groups to one another.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that gifted learning opportunities can’t be made available to more kids, however. And a separate paper , by NWEA researchers, suggests that the key to welcoming more English learners and students with disabilities into accelerated classrooms is for states to enact formal mandates related to the provision of gifted services, require districts to maintain their own formal gifted plans, and regularly audit them for compliance. 

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Kevin Mahnken is a senior writer at The 74.

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What Brown Center scholars will be watching in education policy and politics in 2023

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, daphna bassok , daphna bassok nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy michael hansen , michael hansen senior fellow - brown center on education policy , the herman and george r. brown chair - governance studies douglas n. harris , douglas n. harris nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy , professor and chair, department of economics - tulane university katharine meyer , katharine meyer fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy rachel m. perera , rachel m. perera fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy jon valant , and jon valant director - brown center on education policy , senior fellow - governance studies kenneth k. wong kenneth k. wong nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy.

January 10, 2023

From the continued response to pandemic disruptions to culture war issues that have surfaced in schools, 2022 was an eventful year for U.S. schools and education policy. That looks to be true for 2023 as well.

Below, experts from the Brown Center on Education Policy identify the education stories that they’ll be following in 2023, providing analysis on how these issues could shape the learning landscape for the next 12 months—and possibly well into the future.

In 2023, I’ll be watching innovative state and local efforts to better fund childcare and better support early educators. The pandemic highlighted the essential role childcare plays in the lives of children, families, and the U.S. economy. It also made clear that without greater public support, childcare providers cannot pay teachers adequately and cannot offer families essential supports. The high teacher turnover rates common in early childhood settings compromise quality, and during the pandemic, they also compromised access to care.  In Virginia,  two thirds of publicly funded childcare centers  shut down classrooms or turned families away because they could not recruit and retain teachers.  

Pandemic relief dollars provided an essential lifeline to childcare. However, as these funds run out, states are now facing a stark funding cliff which will exacerbate staffing challenges considerably.  New Mexico  recently passed a ballot measure to establish a permanent funding source in the state constitution, making it the first state in the country to do so . Washington, D.C. approved funding  to work towards childcare compensation that approaches the pay of other D.C. teachers.   Virginia  recently changed their approach to funding subsidized childcare to better account for the true cost of childcare, including better compensation. I’m hopeful other states will follow with big investments and that as the federal funding cliff approaches, we’ll finally see large federal investments in childcare.  

Heading into 2023, I am monitoring the status of the K-12 teacher workforce and reports of teacher shortages. The COVID-19 pandemic has stretched many schools’ human resources in recent years, with teachers reporting heightened burnout and intentions to leave . Combined with preexisting trends of a weakening teacher pipeline and anemic application pools for certain positions and settings , many worried that we may tip into a full-scale crisis.  

I am pleased to report that recent evidence increasingly points in the direction of the teacher workforce weathering the storm, even if the rains haven’t yet fully subsided. For example, district surveys from the spring of 2022 pointed to expected turnover in the current school year (2022-2023) likely being slightly less taxing than last year (2021-2022). New evidence from Washington State shows even the elevated turnover experienced in 2021-2022 was within the range of historical teacher turnover spanning nearly four decades. Finally, another new study from Illinois points to increased staffing levels, particularly among non-teacher staff, as the primary driver of elevated vacancies in schools, even as student enrollments are falling. These reports and other data points give me confidence that we’ll make it through.  

Don’t celebrate just yet, though. We still have work to do shoring up localized shortages in spots that have persistent hiring problems and doing what we can to make the teaching profession more attractive , especially among people of color .  

The first thing I’m looking for in 2023 is a sign that educators, families, and students have responded to COVID-19 by making permanent and systemic improvements in schooling. As I’ve written before , COVID-19 forced everyone into novel practices. Did they develop new habits that are having lasting positive influence, such as using new kinds of devices and software? Or did remote learning create bad habits (e.g., distraction from smart phones) that are making it even more difficult for students to rebound? Anecdotally, I think the answer is “both,” but I hope some enterprising researchers and journalists are looking into this.  

There’s also something I’m not looking for: I don’t expect a noticeable student rebound from COVID-19 learning loss anytime soon. The early evidence doesn’t provide much reason for hope. I think this is because: (a) if educators knew how to get students to catch up from a massive upheaval like this, they would have already been doing this for struggling students before COVID-19; (b) hiring more educators or bringing in new programs with the ESSER funds has proven difficult because of the tight labor market and temporary nature of the funds; and (c) the take-up rate on voluntary, after-school learning activities has been low .   

I’m not exactly optimistic that we’ll “solve” this quickly, but hopefully there’s at least a silver lining in the form of better teaching that will help address the problem gradually, over the long run.  

In 2023, my eyes are on the Supreme Court for two consequential higher education decisions. First will be an expedited hearing on the Biden administration’s  proposed student loan forgiveness  program. The administration accepted  26 million applications  for debt relief this fall; however, forgiveness is on hold until the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in February about the legality of the program. For now, the administration has extended the pause on loan repayment. But regardless of the Court’s ruling, restarting payments on remaining balances after a three-year pause will be a significant shift in individuals’ budgets. It is incumbent on the Department of Education to provide borrowers with clear, advance communication about repayment options and resources to avoid default.  

Second, the Court heard arguments in  October   2022  about the consideration of race in college admissions in two separate cases. I anticipate the Court will rule in favor of the plaintiff in both cases, effectively ending the use of affirmative action. This raises the question of how colleges will shift their recruitment and admissions processes to  advance their goals  of a diverse community of scholars. Colleges will need to examine what other admissions practices, such as legacy admissions or the review of test scores, they may need to adjust to achieve their mission.  

In 2023, I will be following two issues in K-12 education policy that have important implications for equity.   

First, the Biden administration has signaled that new guidance on how public schools can avoid racial discrimination in school discipline may be forthcoming. Any new guidance is expected to mirror guidelines published in 2014 by the Obama administration (and rescinded by the Trump administration in 2018). The Obama-era guidelines relied on a broader definition of racial discrimination (“disparate impact”) than had been used by prior Republican administrations (“disparate treatment”). This is notable because a “disparate impact” theory of discrimination is better aligned with contemporary understandings of how racial discrimination shapes school outcomes.   

I will also be following how school districts spend their remaining COVID-19 relief aid and the implementation of COVID-19 recovery interventions in schools. Emerging research and journalistic reports indicate that school districts are facing significant challenges implementing evidence-based interventions to support students recovering from the varied harms of the pandemic. Other work suggests that the scale of COVID-19 recovery funding provided to schools may be insufficient to meet the current needs of U.S. schools and students. To ensure that students, families, and educators get the support they need, it is critical that we continue to track how COVID-19 recovery in schools is faring.  

In 2023, I’ll be watching what happens with Republicans’ push for “parents’ rights” in schools. Several states have enacted so-called parents’ rights legislation already, with several others—including Texas , Missouri , and Kansas —poised to consider bills (or constitutional amendments) as the new legislative sessions begin. Even the new GOP House majority might pursue a Parents’ Bill of Rights despite decades-long skepticism from Republicans about federal action in K-12 education. With Democrats in control of the Senate and White House, that federal effort won’t go anywhere legislatively, but it could become a model for Republican-led state governments.   

That’s important because the details of these bills matter and have varied quite a bit. (FutureEd has a helpful policy tracker .) Some bills explicitly target teaching about race, gender, and/or sexuality—despite the potential harms to vulnerable students —while others read more like bureaucratic sets of reporting requirements. Some call for major reforms to school choice policies while others sidestep those issues entirely.   

Democrats may have something to say about parent supports, too, with continued interest in cutting childcare costs and reinstating an expanded child tax credit that slashed the child poverty rate . But even if it’s possible, with enough squinting, to see hope for bipartisan legislation , it certainly doesn’t feel like 2023 will be a year for bipartisanship in education.  

Results of the local, state, and national elections in 2022 have shifted the landscape of education governance in 2023. Institutional tension is likely to intensify re quir ing extra efforts by elected officials and stakeholders to resolve their policy differences . At the national level, Republican control in the House will likely slow down, and in some cases, reverse President Biden’s education equity agenda. Congressional oversight will intensify over functions of the U.S. Department of Education and in civil rights enforcement conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice. Challenges against the Biden administration’s polic ies will also come from states where Republican governors and state attorneys have received strong electoral support . These state leaders will launch legal challenges and legislative actions to resist Biden’s executive initiatives .  Finally, at the local level, school board elections have become a contested terrain. While Moms for Liberty, a parental rights group, reported victory for about half of their endorsed board candidates, the National Education Association claimed electoral success for about 70% of their endorsed candidates .  A critical issue is whether and how divided governance at all levels will affect schooling opportunity, accountability, and quality for all students in 2023.    

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Best education articles of 2023

Now three years since COVID’s first classroom closures and a year before districts start to feel the true impact of the fiscal cliff, 2023 marked a pivotal moment for students and schools across America. Fresh scores revealed the stalled state of learning recovery. Educators warned about an escalating chronic absenteeism crisis that has seen students disengage and thrown off track. New political alliances formed around school choice legislation and education savings accounts. Districts became one of the preferred targets of cyberhackers, who posted sensitive student information online. A national alarm was sounded about the state of teen mental health.

From the classroom to the ballot box to the dark web, we’ve been tracking the key storylines of 2023. Here’s our most memorable and impactful journalism of the year...

More From Forbes

The Top 5 Education Trends In 2023

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The world is changing, which means that the way we study and learn in order to thrive in the world has to change, too. For a long time, education has involved us spending a good chunk of our early years sitting in a classroom absorbing information before heading out to put it to use. But the pace of change today means that what we learned one day might be redundant the next.

This means that the way we learn has to change – embracing technology and concepts such as life-long learning to ensure that we are better equipped for the fast-changing world of today. So, here’s my rundown of the most important trends that will drive this change over the next 12 months and beyond.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI), described as the most transformative technology of the 21 st century, is reshaping every industry and field of human activity, including education. In the classroom, it is found in the form of virtual assistants that can help both students and teachers to manage their time and complete their assignments; tutoring systems that can provide personalized learning experiences for students of all ages and abilities; powering remote and online learning systems where it can adapt the pace of teaching to match students’ needs; language translation in educational settings where pupils speak a wide variety of languages, and many other applications. It’s even been reported that some schools in China have implemented facial recognition technology using computer vision systems to monitor whether or not students are paying attention in class!

According to UNESCO , AI has the potential to help tackle some of the toughest challenges in education today, including addressing inequalities in the way schooling is provided around the world and improving access to knowledge globally. However, it also creates challenges of its own – with effort required to ensure that the rollout of this highly disruptive technology is done in a way that is fair and doesn't itself contribute to those inequalities.

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Remote, Online, and Hybrid Learning

The global Covid-19 pandemic forced schools, universities, and course providers to develop the capabilities to deliver education at a distance. But even before this, a revolution was taking place in the domain of online learning, with massive online open courses (MOOCs) exploding in popularity. In schools, remote and online learning means that educators can reach students no matter how isolated their communities are. This could mark a huge step forward in providing equality of access to education in a world where nearly 270 million children do not go to school due to living in remote or rural locations.

Even for those living in cities, the rise of online and remote learning facilities provides an opportunity for us to continue with education even when our busy adult lives mean it would be difficult for us to regularly attend classes in person. This is driven by the emergence of online education technology (ed-tech) platforms such as Udacity, Coursera, Udemy, and EdX. These platforms are designed to enable the "lifelong learning" approach, which is likely to become prevalent thanks to the accelerating pace of technological advancement, which will require skills to be frequently updated and “topped up” through new models such as micro-learning or nano-learning. One trend that has recently emerged within the field of online learning is courses taught by celebrities and renowned practitioners. The Masterclass and Maestro platforms (the latter created by the BBC) offer opportunities such as learning children’s writing from Julia Donaldson, filmmaking from Martin Scorsese, or business from Bob Iger.

Not Just College

In 2023, high schools will increase resources dedicated to preparing students for future paths that lead to places other than traditional college courses. Vocational and technical courses teaching a diverse range of skill sets are likely to become more popular as schools work with employers to develop new solutions to problems caused by the skills gap . In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that 43 percent of high school graduates go on to study at college. Nevertheless, a disproportionate amount of school resources are focused on preparing this minority group, while less teaching focuses on students who plan to continue their education in less traditional ways, such as apprenticeships or on-the-job training. As the demands of the new labor market shift away from seeking purely college-educated graduates and towards developing a workforce with the necessary skills, we can expect to see this change in the future. In Europe, 2023 has been designated the European Year of Skills. This recognizes that a focus on vocational education and training alongside traditional academic, subject-based training may be the key to developing new drivers of economic growth in the face of global slowdown or recession.

Virtual and Augmented Reality

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are two forms of extended reality (XR) that are becoming increasingly important within education systems. VR allows users to step into a virtual world, and there are a vast and growing number of "experiences" that let us do everything from step back in time and experiencing history through our own eyes to training for difficult and dangerous tasks such as conducting repairs in hazardous environments. Other use cases which will grow in popularity during 2023 include virtual classrooms , which allow remote learning and class activities to be delivered in a more immersive and experiential setting. In healthcare training, VR is already being used for everything from enabling nursing students to experience delivering emergency care to training doctors to perform surgery .

Augmented reality still requires a device (e.g., a phone, tabled, or a headset) but is different from VR, as it involves superimposing computer-generated images onto what the user is actually seeing. The advantage here is that it can provide real-time information – for example, warning a trainee in a manufacturing environment that a piece of machinery may be dangerous. This is possible thanks to computer vision algorithms that analyze the images captured by cameras in the headset. In schools, AR textbooks are becoming available that contain images, and models that "come alive" when looked at through a smartphone camera, enabling students to get a closer, more in-depth look at anything from ancient Roman architecture to the inner workings of the human body. Museums and sites of historical or scientific interest are also increasingly adding AR to their environment and exhibits to create more immersive education opportunities.

Soft Skills and STEM

Soft skills include communication skills, teamworking, creative thinking, interpersonal problem-solving, relationship management, and conflict resolution. In other words, they are human skills that are unlikely to be replicated by machines anytime soon. They will become increasingly important in a world where AI takes on many of our routine and mundane technical responsibilities. This means that these skills will increasingly be taught as part of technical education as they become more highly valued by employers and industry. According to HR experts , soft skills are increasingly important to company success but far harder to measure and assess than "hard skills" such as mathematics, engineering, and computer programming.

In 2023 we will see STEM education placing a growing emphasis on these vital skills, as well as increased efforts when it comes to measuring and assessing organizational capabilities in this area.

To stay on top of the latest on new and emerging business and tech trends, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter , follow me on Twitter , LinkedIn , and YouTube , and check out my books ‘ Future Skills: The 20 Skills And Competencies Everyone Needs To Succeed In A Digital World ’ and ‘ Business Trends in Practice , which won the 2022 Business Book of the Year award.

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Guest Essay

The Value of an Education That Never Ends

By Michael S. Roth

Dr. Roth is the president of Wesleyan University and the author of “The Student: A Short History.”

For more than 15 years I have presided over my university’s Arrival Day, the time when families drop off their sons and daughters about to start their college career. Every year some parents will take me aside to say they wish they were starting college, and that they’d get a lot more out of the experience now because they’ve become better learners.

One mother laughingly called herself a “perpetual student.” She meant she pursued learning for the sheer joy of inquiry. But the term is usually one of gentle derision: someone who keeps taking more courses as a way to avoid holding down a job. In other words, a slacker, or a loser. I think that’s wrong. We should begin to see this sort of lifelong learning as a way for individuals to gain not just knowledge, but liberation. In its ideal form, being a perpetual student is not an act of avoidance but rather a path to perpetual self-determination and freedom.

The ideas of “freedom” and “student” were not always linked together. In pre-modern Europe, schools were few and far between, but there was learning nonetheless — learning that aimed at economic independence and integration with a community. Universities were founded in the medieval period, and as literacy became more culturally and economically advantageous, especially after the Protestant Reformation, basic schooling became more common.

For the 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant, the student in pursuit of enlightenment was someone in the process of leaving behind “self-imposed immaturity” and learning to think for oneself. Some people, however, were said to exist outside the realm of learning altogether — at least the kind of learning meant to allow one to stand on one’s own feet. With intellectual contortions fueled by racism and economic self-interest, many supposedly enlightened Enlightenment thinkers and writers argued that enslaved people could not be students, that they did not have the potential to be free. States passed laws forbidding the education of enslaved people. Learning became an act of resistance.

Across the West in the 19th century, formal schooling became more widespread, and debates about education centered on preparing independent thinkers who could also be free citizens. But questions quickly arose: Are schools truly helping students think for themselves, or are they only indoctrinating them into the latest conventions? Will advanced learning lead to scientific gains that benefit society, or will it only create self-serving justifications for the inequalities produced by industrialization? By the mid 1800s Ralph Waldo Emerson would call on his fellow citizens to live more independently by being more open and creative. For him, the freedom of a student was not just an intellectual matter. It was bound up with opposing convention — and it shouldn’t end with school.

The connection between learning and freedom is presupposed in many criticisms of students today as censorious or relativist, illiberal or radical, coddled snowflake or warrior for social justice. As the 1990s boogeyman of political correctness has been transformed in the minds of its enemies into woke and cancel culture, one can see more clearly than ever that the idea of the student is a screen onto which folks (themselves long out of school) project their fears for the future and, perhaps, anxieties about themselves.

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Image credit: Claire Scully

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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7 higher education trends to watch in 2023

Federal financial aid will continue to hog the spotlight, but we’re also waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on race-conscious admissions.

The 2023 calendar year is the first since COVID-19 arrived when every higher education trend doesn’t have to be viewed through a pandemic lens.

Effects of the coronavirus crisis linger, but new topics are taking center stage, like potential reworks to the federal financial aid system, as well as fresh scrutiny — and the rejection of — U.S. News & World Report’s highly influential college rankings. 

As Higher Ed Dive looks ahead to the new year, we anticipate keeping you updated on these seven stories, plus whatever else the new year brings.

Efforts to fix financial aid in the limelight

Calls for colleges to be more transparent about their financial aid offers have come from most corners of the higher education world — lawmakers across the political spectrum, associations and consumer-protection advocates.

Students and their families who receive financial assistance often have to decipher a complex web of aid sources, including federal loans, grants and work-study, which can leave them guessing how much they’ll actually end up paying.

The issue seemed to come to a head toward the end of 2022, as 10 higher education organizations late in November said they would convene a task force aimed at standardizing financial aid information. 

Following the associations’ announcement, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog, dropped a bombshell report finding that more than 9 in 10 colleges downplay their net price or don’t offer any details about it in financial aid offers. 

Republicans were angry. Rep. Virginia Foxx, a leading candidate to be the new chair of the House’s education committee, called the GAO’s findings “egregious and unacceptable.”

Foxx also promoted the College Cost Transparency and Student Protection Act, a Republican-led bill that would call on the U.S. education secretary to establish consistent terms and definitions for financial aid. 

Some experts also expect the U.S. Department of Education to propose financial aid standardization regulations, as the Biden administration has moved to establish several rules thus far that aim to shore up flaws in the student aid system. 

Student loan forgiveness keeps center stage

U.S. higher ed may have gained the widest attention in 2022 for President Joe Biden’s plan to wipe away broad amounts of student loan debt for individual borrowers earning up to $125,000.

Each borrower was set to receive up to $10,000 in debt forgiveness — $20,000 if they got a federal Pell Grant in college. The move intended to assuage Democrats' progressive flank, some of whom had called on the president to cancel more debt. It also acknowledged continued financial pain points from the pandemic. 

However, lawsuits ground the plan to a halt. Rulings in federal lawsuits paused it while raising questions about whether the administration had overreached its authority. Now, debt forgiveness sits before the U.S. Supreme Court, which expedited the case and expects to hear oral arguments in February. 

Legal experts have expressed doubts the conservatives who dominate the high court will back uniliteral debt forgiveness. Conservatives generally argue the debt forgiveness plan is financially reckless and spits in the face of taxpayers who did not attend college.

Meanwhile, Biden extended a pandemic-era pause on loan repayments while the Supreme Court hears the case. The moratorium, which had been scheduled to expire at the end of 2022, will now last until 60 days after litigation is resolved or 60 days after the end of June — whichever comes first.

The attempt at debt forgiveness looks to have ramifications regardless of whether it ultimately succeeds. Foxx in September said she would investigate whether Biden administration officials who worked on the plan would personally benefit from the money.

Race-conscious admissions policies under threat

The Supreme Court will finally decide this year on long-simmering legal challenges to policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that consider applicants’ race during the admissions process.

A conservative legal organization taking on the two institutions, Students for Fair Admissions, has a long history of suing over colleges' race-conscious policies. But this time around, court watchers say SFFA seems almost certain to succeed, as the justices'  conservative tilt almost certainly give them the votes to strike down these practices.

Those who tuned into oral arguments in 2022 noted several justices’ skepticism toward Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill’s reasons for defending race-conscious admissions. Colleges that consider race, however, only use it as one metric in admissions decisions and argue diverse student bodies bring strong educational benefits.

Practically, only a small slice of colleges would need to reshape their admissions practices should the court strike down race-conscious policies, as most institutions accept a majority of applicants. Still, college leaders have shared fears that a ruling against race-conscious admissions would signal to historically marginalized applicants that they aren’t welcome in higher ed. They also worry campus diversity would take a significant hit.

Experts have advised admissions offices to talk with other departments early about strategies on messaging in the event of a ruling against race-conscious policies and to develop strategies to continue crafting diverse classes. 

Can U.S. News & World Report rankings recover?

Higher ed officials watched with great interest as Yale University’s law school, and then Harvard University’s, in November announced they would no longer cooperate with U.S. News & World Report’s Best Law Schools rankings, one of the publication's many college lists that carry major clout. 

The rankings, in particular the Best Colleges undergraduate list, have long been the subject of complaints that they preoccupy institutional decision making to the detriment of colleges’ missions. U.S. News’ methodology also often comes under fire for measuring reputation, wealth and exclusivity — and not the actual quality of institutions' education, how accessible it is or how much it changes the lives of the students served. 

Since Yale and Harvard said they wouldn’t send U.S. News the necessary data, a contingent of other law schools — top-ranked and not — have followed suit. 

These law schools generally say the rankings disadvantage institutions that want to lift law students into public service careers.  U.S. News opened the new year by announcing changes to its law school ranking methodology. But it wasn’t enough for at least some law deans to buy back into the system.

A major unanswered question is whether law schools' rejection will spur a similar movement among undergraduate colleges. While no undergraduate college has shared that they are revolting against the rankings, some experts wonder if they are biding their time until closer to when the Best Colleges list publishes, typically in September. 

Regardless, the law schools’ actions only add to long-building animus against the U.S. News rankings, which suffered other reputational blows in 2022. The publication booted Columbia University from its Best Colleges rankings after questions about data it submitted were raised by one of the university's mathematics professors. It then kicked several other colleges from its 2022 rankings, alleging they also misreported data.

More college consolidations on the horizon

Experts in higher ed finance predicted the financial stresses early in the pandemic would lead to some low-enrollment colleges’ demise, only for federal pandemic support to somewhat shield institutions .

However, no new federal aid appears to be coming down the pipeline. Some institutions had already turned to austerity measures, as the pool of traditional-age college students starts to run dry.

Among the major closings and consolidations announced in higher ed in 2022 were Lincoln College, a predominantly Black institution in Illinois that shut down after a cyberattack added to already mounting stresses, and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, which is splitting up into separate operations run by its constituent research universities.

As colleges continue to feel the pandemic’s lingering financial pinch on top of demographic trends placing downward pressure on the sizes of their student bodies, more institutions will likely meet similar fates. 

Enrollment woes continue

As pandemic-related restrictions eased and life seemed to settle more into normalcy, higher ed leaders held out hope a COVID-19-era enrollment decline would rebound.

That doesn’t appear to be the case. Enrollment fell by 1.1% in fall 2022 from the prior year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center .

Institutions suffered across the board — community colleges, four-year public colleges and for-profits. Less-selective colleges and two-year institutions bore the brunt of these declines.

Some data points, however, should encourage the sector. Enrollment at historically Black colleges and universities rose by 2.5% between fall 2021 and fall 2022. And between fall 2020 and today, enrollment at HBCUs inched up by just under a percentage point. 

Also, undergraduate enrollment at primarily online colleges jumped by more than 3% between fall 2021 and fall 2022.

Skepticism of colleges’ value could push down student counts. And the so-called birth dearth during the Great Recession is arriving for higher education, shrinking the contingent of high school graduates available to enroll in college — and meaning enrollment will likely continue to wane. 

Scrutiny over OPMs grows

Ed tech investors and other observers will be watching closely to see whether online program management companies, or OPMs, will be able to recover from a rocky year marked by layoffs and heightened scrutiny of their business models. 

2U, one of the most prominent OPMs in the U.S., completed across-the-board layoffs last year that led to a 20% reduction in personnel expenses . Coursera, a high-profile MOOC platform with a small OPM business, also announced in November that it was reducing its workforce, though the company did not disclose how many employees were let go. 

But economic headwinds aren’t OPMs’ only trouble. Many of these companies rely on tuition-share agreements, in which they provide upfront capital for online programs in exchange for a cut of their future revenue, often between 40% and 60%. 

Democratic lawmakers asked the U.S. Department of Education late last year to formally investigate whether the agency should continue to allow colleges to enter tuition-share contracts with OPMs that provide recruiting services. They questioned whether these models incentivize OPMs to use aggressive recruiting methods . 

Legal trouble is also brewing. 

A lawsuit brought in December by former University of Southern California students made a similar argument as Democrats. Their complaint focuses on online education programs USC launched with 2U’s help. They allege the university and company worked together to lure students into programs by advertising artificially inflated rankings in U.S. News.

Natalie Schwartz contributed to this report.

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You Are Here: Home » What Comes After Race-Conscious Affirmative Action in Higher Education

What Comes After Race-Conscious Affirmative Action in Higher Education

 The State of Diversity in Higher Education

On June 29th, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against race-conscious Affirmative Action in higher education admissions in Students For Fair Admissions (SFFA) v Harvard and Students For Fair Admissions v UNC . The court’s decision is likely to cause a nationwide decrease in the admissions of students of color. [1] The court’s opinion on this topic has changed drastically over the last few decades. As a result, underrepresented racial and ethnic groups will be on the negative end of the consequences of this new ruling. The number of students of color admitted in universities will decrease significantly. Alternative policy solutions must address legacy admissions, standardized testing, and financial barriers. These alternatives can mitigate the negative impacts of removing race-conscious Affirmative Action and increase diversity of students admitted to higher education. [2]

  What Led to the Overturn of Race-Conscious Affirmative Action

The Supreme Court’s view of race-conscious Affirmative Action has shifted significantly over the past few decades. The roots of Affirmative Action can be traced back to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.  Initially, Affirmative Action aimed to create equal opportunities for minorities to apply for job openings. The term Affirmative Action was introduced into policy when President John F. Kennedy created the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity in 1961 and issued Executive Order 10925. The original intent was to encourage employers to hire marginalized people to end discriminatory hiring practices. [3]

Affirmative Action was then further extended to end discrimination in higher education admissions after the 1978 Supreme Court decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke . The decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke referenced the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause to allow limited consideration of race in higher education admissions. [4] This standard of Affirmative Action would remain for the next few decades to give applicants equal opportunity in the workplace and in education, regardless of race, gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality, and disability. The outcome revolutionized higher education.

In 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice issued guidance on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Then Secretary of Education, Richard Riley, laid out guidance incentivizing universities to promote nondiscriminatory requirements. Universities that complied federal funds for student aid programs, implement recruitment, and retention programs. [5] While Affirmative Action increased the admission rates of underrepresented groups in higher education, many opponents instead viewed it as a discriminatory practice.

While the Regents of the University v Bakke was influential for applying race-conscious Affirmative Action, several other cases arose over the decades challenging the legitimacy of its usage., including the 2003 cases, Grutter v Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger . The Supreme Court’s final decision in Grutter upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s Affirmative Action admissions policy but struck down the undergraduate’s admission policy in Gatz because it awarded applicants points in admission process solely based on race. [6] Additionally in 2013 and 2016, multiple groups challenged the admission policies of the University of Texas at Austin’s usage of Affirmative Action, Fisher v University of Texas at Austin (I, and II). [7] The number of assaults grew, questioning the legitimacy of Affirmative Action and whether it violates the Equal Protection Clause. [8] , all coming to a head in the SFFA v Harvard and SFFA v. UNC decision.

The Consequences That Threaten Diverse Admissions in Higher Education

Racial-ethnic students may face additional barriers getting accepted into colleges and universities, which will decrease the diversity within these institutions. [9] In the 1990s, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Washington, and California banned considerations of race from the college admissions process. These states have all witnessed a decline in racial-ethnic groups universities in these states. [10] In one of the largest states to implement this action, California’s university enrollments of Black and Native American students dropped between 30 to 40 percent in the years 1997-2017. [11]

Following the Supreme Court’s decision, colleges and universities could have large drops in admissions of Black, Hispanic, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Marginalized students of color will have less of a chance to have equitable access to knowledge and skills from higher education to achieve higher paying jobs, especially in STEM fields. [12]  Schools with a highly selective admissions process could expect a 10% drop in Black and Hispanic admissions, especially universities such as Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Duke. [13]

Policy Alternatives Promoting Diverse Admissions in Higher Education

Despite the massive changes in higher education admissions, several policy solutions could address diminishing diversity of students in higher education. An executive order to end legacy admissions is one policy alternative. The executive branch could purse a pathway to an executive order that cites a law from Congress and utilizes the powers of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to forbid the usage of legacy admissions on the ground of denying higher education opportunities from students of color in favor of applicants with familial ties to alumni. Between the years 1998-2008, at least 70% of alumni from the top 100 universities in the country provided donations to their respective universities to incentivize legacy preferences for their children. [14] Additionally, between 2014-2017 legacy students had acceptance rates 31% higher than regular applicants at 52 institutions. [15] These procedures are discriminatory toward first generation college applicants of color who will have an even less chance of getting admitted over legacy students now that race-conscious Affirmative Action admissions are unconstitutional. [16] Ending legacy admissions could help make the higher education admission process more equitable. After Johns Hopkins University ended preferences in legacy admission in 2014, the percentage of first-generation students in their program increased by approximately 10 percent and the percentage of Pell-eligible students increased by about 7 percent between 2013 and 2021. [17]

            Another alternative is Congress enacting legislation that incentivizes state and local schools to stop using standardized testing in the higher education admission process. Congress could develop legislation that provides federal funding that can be used for financial aid to state and local schools, but only on the condition that these schools drop standardized testing scores as a requirement for admissions. Standardized testing is another admissions process that disproportionately benefits white elites and doesn’t increase [18] The graph below shows standardized like the SAT cause larger disadvantages to minority applicants and reduce the chance of Black, Hispanic, or Latino students from getting admitted into higher education institutions.

Colleges are already beginning to phase out standardized testing as a requirement for admissions. A 2017 study by Vox shows that universities that adopted a test-optional admissions format from 2005-2006 and 2015-2016 had a 10% to 12% increase in Pell-grant recipients for first-time students from underrepresented racial/ethnic backgrounds compared to schools using the ACT and SAT. [19]

Lastly, there is the alternative of utilizing Affirmative Action not in the form of race-conscious admissions, but in a socioeconomic way to increase diversity in universities. [20] An executive order could be issued to utilize socioeconomic Affirmative Action as a tool for supporting students from less affluent backgrounds. In SFFA v UNC case , the University of Michigan submitted an amicus brief that explicitly stated class-based admissions do not increase racial diversity and that using it as “as the sole means to increase non-white enrollment can exacerbate the stereotype rather than alleviating them.” [21] Research supports this claim that the use of socioeconomic-based affirmative action is fairer and would not have the same disproportionate impacts as race-based admissions because more low-income white students would also gain admissions to higher education institutions. [22]

[1] “The Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decision: SFFA v. Harvard ….” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/sffa-v-harvard-faq/ .

[2] “Moving Beyond the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Rulings | ACLU.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/moving-beyond-the-supreme-courts-affirmative-action-rulings .

[3] “A Brief History of Affirmative Action and the Assault on Race ….” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://edtrust.org/resource/a-brief-history-of-affirmative-action-and-the-assault-on-race-conscious-admissions/ .

[4] “Regents of the University of California v. Bakke | Oyez.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1979/76-811 .

[5]  “Nondiscrimination in Federally Assisted Programs.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/racefa.html .

[6] “Grutter v. Bollinger – Oyez.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/02-241 .

[7]  “The Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action at Harvard and ….” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10893 .

[8] “How Americans view affirmative action in college admissions, hiring.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/16/americans-and-affirmative-action-how-the-public-sees-the-consideration-of-race-in-college-admissions-hiring/ .

[9] “The Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decision: SFFA v. Harvard ….” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/sffa-v-harvard-faq/ .

[10] “Long-Run Changes in Underrepresentation After Affirmative Action ….” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0162373720904433 .

[11] “Affirmative Action Statistics in College Admissions – BestColleges.com.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/affirmative-action-statistics/ .

[12] Understanding Diversity within the Higher Education Faculty Pipeline.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.urban.org/research/publication/understanding-diversity-within-higher-education-faculty-pipeline .

[13] “The Neglected College Race Gap: Racial Disparities Among ….” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/neglected-college-race-gap-racial-disparities-among-college-completers/ .

[14] “Affirmative action for white college applicants is still here – Vox.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/6/30/23778906/affirmative-action-white-applicants-legacy-athletic-recruitment .

[15]  “Quantifying the Advantage for Legacy Applicants – Inside Higher Ed.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2017/08/21/data-provide-insights-advantages-and-qualifications-legacy-applicants .

[16] “Affirmative Action for the Rich – The Century Foundation.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://tcf.org/content/book/affirmative-action-for-the-rich/ .

[17] “The Future of College Admissions without Affirmative Action.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/future-college-admissions-without-affirmative-action .

[18] “SAT math scores mirror and maintain racial inequity | Brookings.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sat-math-scores-mirror-and-maintain-racial-inequity/ .

[19] “How the SATs lost their grip on college admissions – Vox.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.vox.com/23700778/sat-act-standardized-tests-college-high-school .

[20] “What Levels of Racial Diversity Can Be Achieved with ….” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pam.22056 .

[21] “The Future of College Admissions without Affirmative Action.” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/future-college-admissions-without-affirmative-action .

[22] “Affirmative Action, Mismatch, and Economic Mobility After ….” Accessed December 3, 2023. https://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/affirmative-action-mismatch-and-economic-mobility-after-california%E2%80%99s-proposition-209 .

Watch CBS News

Schools across the U.S. restrict cellphones amid growing behavior, mental health, academic concerns

By Cara Tabachnick

September 2, 2024 / 8:00 AM EDT / CBS News

High school students who started school at Kansas City's Ewing Marion Kauffman School saw something new when they entered their classrooms: a cellphone lockbox. 

A new policy requires all high school students   to lock away their phones for the day. Students drop their mobiles into the box, which is designed for phones, and it's locked into after school hours, said Deon Whitten, dean of students at the charter school. The restrictions were instituted after a pilot study in 2023 with one ninth grade class showed those phone-free students had the highest GPA across the school, said Whitten. 

Once administrators saw the academic achievements the decision to restrict phones came easily. "There is a certain pressure with phones," said Whitten, 39, who has been at the charter school for about three years. "Now they could go to school and just be students. They don't have to worry." 

Teachers and administrators have long known cellphones were major distractions in learning: A  2023 Pew survey showed 72%  of high school teachers view cellphones as a major problem in their classrooms. 

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory on the effects of social media on youth mental health. This week he also issued an advisory on "parental stress," specifically naming monitoring children's phone use as a cause. 

But it's not just about academics. Cellphone restrictions can also assist with social development and creating community at the school, Kim Whitman a parent turned advocate told CBS News. Whitman, a co-founder of Phone Free , started advocating for no mobiles in schools after her children started their education. She said their organization surveys schools across the country that report massive behavioral issues, including fights planned on social media and an increasingly "anxious" generation. Whitman said if schools "allow phones to be present it's hard for students to connect and create a sense of belonging."

Some students concede having a phone in class distracted them from learning, and not having them felt better. "I'm not worried about the notifications I'm getting and who's texting me or what's going on on social media," Jazmine Anderson, an eighth grader at Martin Luther King Middle School in Virginia, told CBS News.

Administrators and communities listened: About 76% of public schools prohibit non-academic use of cellphones or smartphones during school hours, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics.

But not every district wants to deal with a ban. Some parents want to have access to their children for safety concerns — or in the event of everyone's worst nightmare, a mass shooting — or for more mundane reasons, like coordinating rides or after-school scheduling. Virginia's Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order in the state  that requires districts to limit or ban cell phones by Jan. 1, even though many are already piloting programs. He told CBS News' Meg Oliver that as a parent he understands there still are "very practical concerns that need to be put in place," and families often need to be in touch during the day.

Other teachers and administrators don't want to become what some New York City educators described to CBS New York as the "phone police," risking wasting time on enforcing the ban or arguing with students about their phones. The country's largest school district proposed a ban, but ultimately wasn't able to get phone restrictions in place before the 2024 school year, CBS New York reported . 

Kansas City's Whitten says things have gone fairly smoothly with the implementation, but before instituting the no cellphone rule they had to get buy-in from parents. Some pushed back, Whitten said, concerned about safety and being in touch with their children in case of a mass shooting or other events, and some parents he said, just want control.

Other large school districts,  such as Los Angeles , were able to ban phones on school campuses. Florida banned cellphones across the state in 2023 and Indiana and Ohio passed legislation this year. 

Other schools are approaching it piecemeal, district by district. 

Granite School District in Utah restricted cellphone use in schools this year, buying pouches to allow students to keep their phones on them, CBS affiliate  KUTV reported.  "There's a lot of bullying and harassment going on through social media (and) through texting that's distracting," said Andrea Stringham, Granite School District spokesperson. It's also something that would "just help our students overall — academically, mentally, emotionally," she said.

New Jersey's Cherry Hill Public School District said they are instituting their new cellphone restrictions, which were passed in August, in steps. Superintendent Kwame Morton told CBS News after much discussion kids are going to be allowed to keep their cellphones on their person during school hours, but aren't allowed to use them during instructional hours. Students who don't follow the rules will be subject to the school's disciplinary policy, he said. Morton said after some pushback from vocal parents, the school decided to go with the least restrictive route. 

Morton said there was a consensus around concerns for students and constant access to mobile devices. "Kids are just growing up with a constant barrage on their mental health," he said.

Cara Tabachnick is a news editor at CBSNews.com. Cara began her career on the crime beat at Newsday. She has written for Marie Claire, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. She reports on justice and human rights issues. Contact her at [email protected]

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The Campus Protests Over Gaza Are All Part of a Good Education

Without being exposed to diversity and disagreement, college students won’t learn how to think for themselves..

With college students returning to campus , and the brutal war in Gaza continuing unabated, many schools—including mine—are bracing for renewed protests. As president of Wesleyan University in Connecticut, I have already received demands from Pro-Palestinian undergraduates—not to mention emails from students, parents, and alumni demanding that I silence those undergraduates. Throw in the heightened tension of a presidential election in two months, and the coals on many campuses may only get hotter.  

That’s a good thing. Colleges and universities should not retreat into some fantasy of neutrality . They should help students practice something that has become a prominent theme in the presidential race: freedom.

In the West, the student has long been conceptualized as someone on the path to freedom, to thinking for oneself in the company of others. It’s an idealized notion, to be sure, but a practical one as well. The proof of a good education is that one’s capacity to learn continues to grow after graduation—and that’s precisely what economies that prize innovation, and democracies that encourage deliberation and change, need from their participants. The student, practicing freedom on a path to maturity, learns how to attend to others; and paying attention is a key step in creating opportunities, righting wrongs, or helping those who are suffering. The good student turns out to be a good thinker, a good provider, and a good neighbor.   

The good student doesn’t do this alone. Deeply embedded in the culture of American higher education is the notion of what literary historian Andrew Delbanco calls “lateral learning, the proposition that students have something important to learn from one another.” While we expect professors to offer instruction in the fields in which they have expertise, most American colleges, especially residential ones, promise that learning will be a communal journey in which one’s peers help one to flourish. But if these peers are too much like oneself, if a student too easily “fits in” at a college, then the journey won’t go far.

Homogeneity in the student body—not only in terms of racial or ethnic identity, but also in points of view, belief systems, aspirations, interests, and so on—undermines colleges’ mission to help students develop personal autonomy. That’s why it’s so important for schools to recruit students from every part of the country (and, if possible, from around the world). It’s also why the Supreme Court decision ending race-based affirmative action was so pernicious: It privileges (questionable) notions of individual fairness over community diversity, causing the community as a whole to learn less. Lateral learning really only works when students, both inside and outside the classroom, have to navigate difference—it’s a critical element to practicing freedom.

At the same time, if we truly believe in the benefits of diversity, we in higher education should take to heart criticism of our own insularity and our role in effectively reinforcing forms of inequality and elitism. If our students are learning to look down on anyone who lacks the same level of education, then our talk about diversity can seem just a cover for defending the current economic and cultural hierarchy. Wearing the mantle of progressivism doesn’t get you off the hook. Just because you believe you are on the right side of history doesn’t justify contempt for those who don’t share your vision of the future.

In education, insularity should be the enemy. Yet we liberal-arts academics, despite celebrating broad learning, often nurture niche cultures and speak in esoteric dialects that would seem foreign to many Americans. At the same time, extreme parochialism has been growing in the public sphere, thanks in part to fear-based politics. This is antithetical to liberal learning, whether it is conducted under the reactionary guise of various nationalist causes or the progressive guise of defending the latest version of a “minoritized” identity. In both cases, certain kinds of people are too often dismissed as having nothing to teach us. 

Writing off people with whom one disagrees will always be easier than listening carefully to their arguments or attending to their creative endeavors. But without tolerance and open-mindedness, inquiry can be at best just a path to self-congratulation, and at worst, violent scapegoating. By contrast, a liberal education should deepen one’s ability to learn from people unlike oneself and with whom one doesn’t agree. Such a relation to others can help calm the politics of resentment raging about us.  

But does it? Critics of higher education say it’s a phony meritocracy, accuse faculty of indoctrinating students, and claim that students pad their resumes with meaningless credentials and demand straight A’s merely for having completed the assignments. The charges of unfair student admissions that underpinned the legal assault on affirmative action, like the criticisms above, attack the integrity of learning as a path to freely thinking for oneself. After all, if the opportunity to study is unevenly made available to people, then it should be rejected by a thoughtful person who recognizes that such education is really corruption. If going to college means participating in one’s own indoctrination, then one can find no enlightenment there.

Campuses have long been screens upon which the broader culture expresses its anxieties about political and social change, economic dislocation, and the decline of traditional mores. Critics on both the left and the right haven’t been questioning the modern Enlightenment idea of learning as a journey to maturity so much as doubting whether students were actually on that path. Whether accusing students of radicalism or conformism, apathy or grade-grubbing, nearly all critics bemoan the inability of undergraduates to think for themselves.

Critics of higher education want it to live up to the ideal of being an opportunity for learning freedom. So do its defenders. And so do many of its students. To that end, there are two fundamental pragmatic goals for the university: to preserve culture and to stimulate inquiry for the sake of social progress. Of course, we will debate with one another about how much we should be preserving and what really counts as progress. But those debates help higher education fulfill its purposes—by offering an opportunity, to paraphrase John Dewey , to teach students to share in the arts of living. “Civilization is uncivil,” he wrote, “because human beings are divided into non-communicating sects, races, nations, classes and cliques.” We practice freedom to break down those artificial divisions and to open up possibilities of meaning, of joy, and of productive work.

Practicing freedom can be messy, as it surely will be on many campuses this fall. Thinking for yourself in the company of others, especially when the coals are hot, is not easy. But our disagreements will teach us lessons that will serve us well long after the coals have cooled.

Michael S. Roth is the president of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. His most recent books are The Student: A Short History and Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist’s Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, and Political Correctness on College Campuses .

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• Published: 31 August 2024

Knowledge mapping and evolution of research on older adults’ technology acceptance: a bibliometric study from 2013 to 2023

• Xianru Shang   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0000-8906-3216 1 ,
• Zijian Liu 1 ,
• Chen Gong 1 ,
• Zhigang Hu 1 ,
• Yuexuan Wu 1 &
• Chengliang Wang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2208-3508 2  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  1115 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

• Science, technology and society

The rapid expansion of information technology and the intensification of population aging are two prominent features of contemporary societal development. Investigating older adults’ acceptance and use of technology is key to facilitating their integration into an information-driven society. Given this context, the technology acceptance of older adults has emerged as a prioritized research topic, attracting widespread attention in the academic community. However, existing research remains fragmented and lacks a systematic framework. To address this gap, we employed bibliometric methods, utilizing the Web of Science Core Collection to conduct a comprehensive review of literature on older adults’ technology acceptance from 2013 to 2023. Utilizing VOSviewer and CiteSpace for data assessment and visualization, we created knowledge mappings of research on older adults’ technology acceptance. Our study employed multidimensional methods such as co-occurrence analysis, clustering, and burst analysis to: (1) reveal research dynamics, key journals, and domains in this field; (2) identify leading countries, their collaborative networks, and core research institutions and authors; (3) recognize the foundational knowledge system centered on theoretical model deepening, emerging technology applications, and research methods and evaluation, uncovering seminal literature and observing a shift from early theoretical and influential factor analyses to empirical studies focusing on individual factors and emerging technologies; (4) moreover, current research hotspots are primarily in the areas of factors influencing technology adoption, human-robot interaction experiences, mobile health management, and aging-in-place technology, highlighting the evolutionary context and quality distribution of research themes. Finally, we recommend that future research should deeply explore improvements in theoretical models, long-term usage, and user experience evaluation. Overall, this study presents a clear framework of existing research in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, providing an important reference for future theoretical exploration and innovative applications.

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Introduction.

In contemporary society, the rapid development of information technology has been intricately intertwined with the intensifying trend of population aging. According to the latest United Nations forecast, by 2050, the global population aged 65 and above is expected to reach 1.6 billion, representing about 16% of the total global population (UN 2023 ). Given the significant challenges of global aging, there is increasing evidence that emerging technologies have significant potential to maintain health and independence for older adults in their home and healthcare environments (Barnard et al. 2013 ; Soar 2010 ; Vancea and Solé-Casals 2016 ). This includes, but is not limited to, enhancing residential safety with smart home technologies (Touqeer et al. 2021 ; Wang et al. 2022 ), improving living independence through wearable technologies (Perez et al. 2023 ), and increasing medical accessibility via telehealth services (Kruse et al. 2020 ). Technological innovations are redefining the lifestyles of older adults, encouraging a shift from passive to active participation (González et al. 2012 ; Mostaghel 2016 ). Nevertheless, the effective application and dissemination of technology still depends on user acceptance and usage intentions (Naseri et al. 2023 ; Wang et al. 2023a ; Xia et al. 2024 ; Yu et al. 2023 ). Particularly, older adults face numerous challenges in accepting and using new technologies. These challenges include not only physical and cognitive limitations but also a lack of technological experience, along with the influences of social and economic factors (Valk et al. 2018 ; Wilson et al. 2021 ).

User acceptance of technology is a significant focus within information systems (IS) research (Dai et al. 2024 ), with several models developed to explain and predict user behavior towards technology usage, including the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis 1989 ), TAM2, TAM3, and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) (Venkatesh et al. 2003 ). Older adults, as a group with unique needs, exhibit different behavioral patterns during technology acceptance than other user groups, and these uniquenesses include changes in cognitive abilities, as well as motivations, attitudes, and perceptions of the use of new technologies (Chen and Chan 2011 ). The continual expansion of technology introduces considerable challenges for older adults, rendering the understanding of their technology acceptance a research priority. Thus, conducting in-depth research into older adults’ acceptance of technology is critically important for enhancing their integration into the information society and improving their quality of life through technological advancements.

Reviewing relevant literature to identify research gaps helps further solidify the theoretical foundation of the research topic. However, many existing literature reviews primarily focus on the factors influencing older adults’ acceptance or intentions to use technology. For instance, Ma et al. ( 2021 ) conducted a comprehensive analysis of the determinants of older adults’ behavioral intentions to use technology; Liu et al. ( 2022 ) categorized key variables in studies of older adults’ technology acceptance, noting a shift in focus towards social and emotional factors; Yap et al. ( 2022 ) identified seven categories of antecedents affecting older adults’ use of technology from an analysis of 26 articles, including technological, psychological, social, personal, cost, behavioral, and environmental factors; Schroeder et al. ( 2023 ) extracted 119 influencing factors from 59 articles and further categorized these into six themes covering demographics, health status, and emotional awareness. Additionally, some studies focus on the application of specific technologies, such as Ferguson et al. ( 2021 ), who explored barriers and facilitators to older adults using wearable devices for heart monitoring, and He et al. ( 2022 ) and Baer et al. ( 2022 ), who each conducted in-depth investigations into the acceptance of social assistive robots and mobile nutrition and fitness apps, respectively. In summary, current literature reviews on older adults’ technology acceptance exhibit certain limitations. Due to the interdisciplinary nature and complex knowledge structure of this field, traditional literature reviews often rely on qualitative analysis, based on literature analysis and periodic summaries, which lack sufficient objectivity and comprehensiveness. Additionally, systematic research is relatively limited, lacking a macroscopic description of the research trajectory from a holistic perspective. Over the past decade, research on older adults’ technology acceptance has experienced rapid growth, with a significant increase in literature, necessitating the adoption of new methods to review and examine the developmental trends in this field (Chen 2006 ; Van Eck and Waltman 2010 ). Bibliometric analysis, as an effective quantitative research method, analyzes published literature through visualization, offering a viable approach to extracting patterns and insights from a large volume of papers, and has been widely applied in numerous scientific research fields (Achuthan et al. 2023 ; Liu and Duffy 2023 ). Therefore, this study will employ bibliometric methods to systematically analyze research articles related to older adults’ technology acceptance published in the Web of Science Core Collection from 2013 to 2023, aiming to understand the core issues and evolutionary trends in the field, and to provide valuable references for future related research. Specifically, this study aims to explore and answer the following questions:

RQ1: What are the research dynamics in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance over the past decade? What are the main academic journals and fields that publish studies related to older adults’ technology acceptance?

RQ2: How is the productivity in older adults’ technology acceptance research distributed among countries, institutions, and authors?

RQ3: What are the knowledge base and seminal literature in older adults’ technology acceptance research? How has the research theme progressed?

RQ4: What are the current hot topics and their evolutionary trajectories in older adults’ technology acceptance research? How is the quality of research distributed?

Methodology and materials

Research method.

In recent years, bibliometrics has become one of the crucial methods for analyzing literature reviews and is widely used in disciplinary and industrial intelligence analysis (Jing et al. 2023 ; Lin and Yu 2024a ; Wang et al. 2024a ; Xu et al. 2021 ). Bibliometric software facilitates the visualization analysis of extensive literature data, intuitively displaying the network relationships and evolutionary processes between knowledge units, and revealing the underlying knowledge structure and potential information (Chen et al. 2024 ; López-Robles et al. 2018 ; Wang et al. 2024c ). This method provides new insights into the current status and trends of specific research areas, along with quantitative evidence, thereby enhancing the objectivity and scientific validity of the research conclusions (Chen et al. 2023 ; Geng et al. 2024 ). VOSviewer and CiteSpace are two widely used bibliometric software tools in academia (Pan et al. 2018 ), recognized for their robust functionalities based on the JAVA platform. Although each has its unique features, combining these two software tools effectively constructs mapping relationships between literature knowledge units and clearly displays the macrostructure of the knowledge domains. Particularly, VOSviewer, with its excellent graphical representation capabilities, serves as an ideal tool for handling large datasets and precisely identifying the focal points and hotspots of research topics. Therefore, this study utilizes VOSviewer (version 1.6.19) and CiteSpace (version 6.1.R6), combined with in-depth literature analysis, to comprehensively examine and interpret the research theme of older adults’ technology acceptance through an integrated application of quantitative and qualitative methods.

Data source

Web of Science is a comprehensively recognized database in academia, featuring literature that has undergone rigorous peer review and editorial scrutiny (Lin and Yu 2024b ; Mongeon and Paul-Hus 2016 ; Pranckutė 2021 ). This study utilizes the Web of Science Core Collection as its data source, specifically including three major citation indices: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI). These indices encompass high-quality research literature in the fields of science, social sciences, and arts and humanities, ensuring the comprehensiveness and reliability of the data. We combined “older adults” with “technology acceptance” through thematic search, with the specific search strategy being: TS = (elder OR elderly OR aging OR ageing OR senile OR senior OR old people OR “older adult*”) AND TS = (“technology acceptance” OR “user acceptance” OR “consumer acceptance”). The time span of literature search is from 2013 to 2023, with the types limited to “Article” and “Review” and the language to “English”. Additionally, the search was completed by October 27, 2023, to avoid data discrepancies caused by database updates. The initial search yielded 764 journal articles. Given that searches often retrieve articles that are superficially relevant but actually non-compliant, manual screening post-search was essential to ensure the relevance of the literature (Chen et al. 2024 ). Through manual screening, articles significantly deviating from the research theme were eliminated and rigorously reviewed. Ultimately, this study obtained 500 valid sample articles from the Web of Science Core Collection. The complete PRISMA screening process is illustrated in Fig. 1 .

Presentation of the data culling process in detail.

Data standardization

Raw data exported from databases often contain multiple expressions of the same terminology (Nguyen and Hallinger 2020 ). To ensure the accuracy and consistency of data, it is necessary to standardize the raw data (Strotmann and Zhao 2012 ). This study follows the data standardization process proposed by Taskin and Al ( 2019 ), mainly executing the following operations:

(1) Standardization of author and institution names is conducted to address different name expressions for the same author. For instance, “Chan, Alan Hoi Shou” and “Chan, Alan H. S.” are considered the same author, and distinct authors with the same name are differentiated by adding identifiers. Diverse forms of institutional names are unified to address variations caused by name changes or abbreviations, such as standardizing “FRANKFURT UNIV APPL SCI” and “Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences,” as well as “Chinese University of Hong Kong” and “University of Hong Kong” to consistent names.

(2) Different expressions of journal names are unified. For example, “International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction” and “Int J Hum Comput Interact” are standardized to a single name. This ensures consistency in journal names and prevents misclassification of literature due to differing journal names. Additionally, it involves checking if the journals have undergone name changes in the past decade to prevent any impact on the analysis due to such changes.

(3) Keywords data are cleansed by removing words that do not directly pertain to specific research content (e.g., people, review), merging synonyms (e.g., “UX” and “User Experience,” “aging-in-place” and “aging in place”), and standardizing plural forms of keywords (e.g., “assistive technologies” and “assistive technology,” “social robots” and “social robot”). This reduces redundant information in knowledge mapping.

Bibliometric results and analysis

Distribution power (rq1), literature descriptive statistical analysis.

Table 1 presents a detailed descriptive statistical overview of the literature in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. After deduplication using the CiteSpace software, this study confirmed a valid sample size of 500 articles. Authored by 1839 researchers, the documents encompass 792 research institutions across 54 countries and are published in 217 different academic journals. As of the search cutoff date, these articles have accumulated 13,829 citations, with an annual average of 1156 citations, and an average of 27.66 citations per article. The h-index, a composite metric of quantity and quality of scientific output (Kamrani et al. 2021 ), reached 60 in this study.

Trends in publications and disciplinary distribution

The number of publications and citations are significant indicators of the research field’s development, reflecting its continuity, attention, and impact (Ale Ebrahim et al. 2014 ). The ranking of annual publications and citations in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance studies is presented chronologically in Fig. 2A . The figure shows a clear upward trend in the amount of literature in this field. Between 2013 and 2017, the number of publications increased slowly and decreased in 2018. However, in 2019, the number of publications increased rapidly to 52 and reached a peak of 108 in 2022, which is 6.75 times higher than in 2013. In 2022, the frequency of document citations reached its highest point with 3466 citations, reflecting the widespread recognition and citation of research in this field. Moreover, the curve of the annual number of publications fits a quadratic function, with a goodness-of-fit R 2 of 0.9661, indicating that the number of future publications is expected to increase even more rapidly.

A Trends in trends in annual publications and citations (2013–2023). B Overlay analysis of the distribution of discipline fields.

Figure 2B shows that research on older adults’ technology acceptance involves the integration of multidisciplinary knowledge. According to Web of Science Categories, these 500 articles are distributed across 85 different disciplines. We have tabulated the top ten disciplines by publication volume (Table 2 ), which include Medical Informatics (75 articles, 15.00%), Health Care Sciences & Services (71 articles, 14.20%), Gerontology (61 articles, 12.20%), Public Environmental & Occupational Health (57 articles, 11.40%), and Geriatrics & Gerontology (52 articles, 10.40%), among others. The high output in these disciplines reflects the concentrated global academic interest in this comprehensive research topic. Additionally, interdisciplinary research approaches provide diverse perspectives and a solid theoretical foundation for studies on older adults’ technology acceptance, also paving the way for new research directions.

Knowledge flow analysis

A dual-map overlay is a CiteSpace map superimposed on top of a base map, which shows the interrelationships between journals in different domains, representing the publication and citation activities in each domain (Chen and Leydesdorff 2014 ). The overlay map reveals the link between the citing domain (on the left side) and the cited domain (on the right side), reflecting the knowledge flow of the discipline at the journal level (Leydesdorff and Rafols 2012 ). We utilize the in-built Z-score algorithm of the software to cluster the graph, as shown in Fig. 3 .

The left side shows the citing journal, and the right side shows the cited journal.

Figure 3 shows the distribution of citing journals clusters for older adults’ technology acceptance on the left side, while the right side refers to the main cited journals clusters. Two knowledge flow citation trajectories were obtained; they are presented by the color of the cited regions, and the thickness of these trajectories is proportional to the Z-score scaled frequency of citations (Chen et al. 2014 ). Within the cited regions, the most popular fields with the most records covered are “HEALTH, NURSING, MEDICINE” and “PSYCHOLOGY, EDUCATION, SOCIAL”, and the elliptical aspect ratio of these two fields stands out. Fields have prominent elliptical aspect ratios, highlighting their significant influence on older adults’ technology acceptance research. Additionally, the major citation trajectories originate in these two areas and progress to the frontier research area of “PSYCHOLOGY, EDUCATION, HEALTH”. It is worth noting that the citation trajectory from “PSYCHOLOGY, EDUCATION, SOCIAL” has a significant Z-value (z = 6.81), emphasizing the significance and impact of this development path. In the future, “MATHEMATICS, SYSTEMS, MATHEMATICAL”, “MOLECULAR, BIOLOGY, IMMUNOLOGY”, and “NEUROLOGY, SPORTS, OPHTHALMOLOGY” may become emerging fields. The fields of “MEDICINE, MEDICAL, CLINICAL” may be emerging areas of cutting-edge research.

Main research journals analysis

Table 3 provides statistics for the top ten journals by publication volume in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. Together, these journals have published 137 articles, accounting for 27.40% of the total publications, indicating that there is no highly concentrated core group of journals in this field, with publications being relatively dispersed. Notably, Computers in Human Behavior , Journal of Medical Internet Research , and International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction each lead with 15 publications. In terms of citation metrics, International Journal of Medical Informatics and Computers in Human Behavior stand out significantly, with the former accumulating a total of 1,904 citations, averaging 211.56 citations per article, and the latter totaling 1,449 citations, with an average of 96.60 citations per article. These figures emphasize the academic authority and widespread impact of these journals within the research field.

Research power (RQ2)

Countries and collaborations analysis.

The analysis revealed the global research pattern for country distribution and collaboration (Chen et al. 2019 ). Figure 4A shows the network of national collaborations on older adults’ technology acceptance research. The size of the bubbles represents the amount of publications in each country, while the thickness of the connecting lines expresses the closeness of the collaboration among countries. Generally, this research subject has received extensive international attention, with China and the USA publishing far more than any other countries. China has established notable research collaborations with the USA, UK and Malaysia in this field, while other countries have collaborations, but the closeness is relatively low and scattered. Figure 4B shows the annual publication volume dynamics of the top ten countries in terms of total publications. Since 2017, China has consistently increased its annual publications, while the USA has remained relatively stable. In 2019, the volume of publications in each country increased significantly, this was largely due to the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to increased reliance on information technology among the elderly for medical consultations, online socialization, and health management (Sinha et al. 2021 ). This phenomenon has led to research advances in technology acceptance among older adults in various countries. Table 4 shows that the top ten countries account for 93.20% of the total cumulative number of publications, with each country having published more than 20 papers. Among these ten countries, all of them except China are developed countries, indicating that the research field of older adults’ technology acceptance has received general attention from developed countries. Currently, China and the USA were the leading countries in terms of publications with 111 and 104 respectively, accounting for 22.20% and 20.80%. The UK, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands also made significant contributions. The USA and China ranked first and second in terms of the number of citations, while the Netherlands had the highest average citations, indicating the high impact and quality of its research. The UK has shown outstanding performance in international cooperation, while the USA highlights its significant academic influence in this field with the highest h-index value.

A National collaboration network. B Annual volume of publications in the top 10 countries.

Institutions and authors analysis

Analyzing the number of publications and citations can reveal an institution’s or author’s research strength and influence in a particular research area (Kwiek 2021 ). Tables 5 and 6 show the statistics of the institutions and authors whose publication counts are in the top ten, respectively. As shown in Table 5 , higher education institutions hold the main position in this research field. Among the top ten institutions, City University of Hong Kong and The University of Hong Kong from China lead with 14 and 9 publications, respectively. City University of Hong Kong has the highest h-index, highlighting its significant influence in the field. It is worth noting that Tilburg University in the Netherlands is not among the top five in terms of publications, but the high average citation count (130.14) of its literature demonstrates the high quality of its research.

After analyzing the authors’ output using Price’s Law (Redner 1998 ), the highest number of publications among the authors counted ( n  = 10) defines a publication threshold of 3 for core authors in this research area. As a result of quantitative screening, a total of 63 core authors were identified. Table 6 shows that Chen from Zhejiang University, China, Ziefle from RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and Rogers from Macquarie University, Australia, were the top three authors in terms of the number of publications, with 10, 9, and 8 articles, respectively. In terms of average citation rate, Peek and Wouters, both scholars from the Netherlands, have significantly higher rates than other scholars, with 183.2 and 152.67 respectively. This suggests that their research is of high quality and widely recognized. Additionally, Chen and Rogers have high h-indices in this field.

Knowledge base and theme progress (RQ3)

Research knowledge base.

Co-citation relationships occur when two documents are cited together (Zhang and Zhu 2022 ). Co-citation mapping uses references as nodes to represent the knowledge base of a subject area (Min et al. 2021). Figure 5A illustrates co-occurrence mapping in older adults’ technology acceptance research, where larger nodes signify higher co-citation frequencies. Co-citation cluster analysis can be used to explore knowledge structure and research boundaries (Hota et al. 2020 ; Shiau et al. 2023 ). The co-citation clustering mapping of older adults’ technology acceptance research literature (Fig. 5B ) shows that the Q value of the clustering result is 0.8129 (>0.3), and the average value of the weight S is 0.9391 (>0.7), indicating that the clusters are uniformly distributed with a significant and credible structure. This further proves that the boundaries of the research field are clear and there is significant differentiation in the field. The figure features 18 cluster labels, each associated with thematic color blocks corresponding to different time slices. Highlighted emerging research themes include #2 Smart Home Technology, #7 Social Live, and #10 Customer Service. Furthermore, the clustering labels extracted are primarily classified into three categories: theoretical model deepening, emerging technology applications, research methods and evaluation, as detailed in Table 7 .

A Co-citation analysis of references. B Clustering network analysis of references.

Seminal literature analysis

The top ten nodes in terms of co-citation frequency were selected for further analysis. Table 8 displays the corresponding node information. Studies were categorized into four main groups based on content analysis. (1) Research focusing on specific technology usage by older adults includes studies by Peek et al. ( 2014 ), Ma et al. ( 2016 ), Hoque and Sorwar ( 2017 ), and Li et al. ( 2019 ), who investigated the factors influencing the use of e-technology, smartphones, mHealth, and smart wearables, respectively. (2) Concerning the development of theoretical models of technology acceptance, Chen and Chan ( 2014 ) introduced the Senior Technology Acceptance Model (STAM), and Macedo ( 2017 ) analyzed the predictive power of UTAUT2 in explaining older adults’ intentional behaviors and information technology usage. (3) In exploring older adults’ information technology adoption and behavior, Lee and Coughlin ( 2015 ) emphasized that the adoption of technology by older adults is a multifactorial process that includes performance, price, value, usability, affordability, accessibility, technical support, social support, emotion, independence, experience, and confidence. Yusif et al. ( 2016 ) conducted a literature review examining the key barriers affecting older adults’ adoption of assistive technology, including factors such as privacy, trust, functionality/added value, cost, and stigma. (4) From the perspective of research into older adults’ technology acceptance, Mitzner et al. ( 2019 ) assessed the long-term usage of computer systems designed for the elderly, whereas Guner and Acarturk ( 2020 ) compared information technology usage and acceptance between older and younger adults. The breadth and prevalence of this literature make it a vital reference for researchers in the field, also providing new perspectives and inspiration for future research directions.

Research thematic progress

Burst citation is a node of literature that guides the sudden change in dosage, which usually represents a prominent development or major change in a particular field, with innovative and forward-looking qualities. By analyzing the emergent literature, it is often easy to understand the dynamics of the subject area, mapping the emerging thematic change (Chen et al. 2022 ). Figure 6 shows the burst citation mapping in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance research, with burst citations represented by red nodes (Fig. 6A ). For the ten papers with the highest burst intensity (Fig. 6B ), this study will conduct further analysis in conjunction with literature review.

A Burst detection of co-citation. B The top 10 references with the strongest citation bursts.

As shown in Fig. 6 , Mitzner et al. ( 2010 ) broke the stereotype that older adults are fearful of technology, found that they actually have positive attitudes toward technology, and emphasized the centrality of ease of use and usefulness in the process of technology acceptance. This finding provides an important foundation for subsequent research. During the same period, Wagner et al. ( 2010 ) conducted theory-deepening and applied research on technology acceptance among older adults. The research focused on older adults’ interactions with computers from the perspective of Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). This expanded the understanding of technology acceptance, particularly regarding the relationship between behavior, environment, and other SCT elements. In addition, Pan and Jordan-Marsh ( 2010 ) extended the TAM to examine the interactions among predictors of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norm, and convenience conditions when older adults use the Internet, taking into account the moderating roles of gender and age. Heerink et al. ( 2010 ) adapted and extended the UTAUT, constructed a technology acceptance model specifically designed for older users’ acceptance of assistive social agents, and validated it using controlled experiments and longitudinal data, explaining intention to use by combining functional assessment and social interaction variables.

Then the research theme shifted to an in-depth analysis of the factors influencing technology acceptance among older adults. Two papers with high burst strengths emerged during this period: Peek et al. ( 2014 ) (Strength = 12.04), Chen and Chan ( 2014 ) (Strength = 9.81). Through a systematic literature review and empirical study, Peek STM and Chen K, among others, identified multidimensional factors that influence older adults’ technology acceptance. Peek et al. ( 2014 ) analyzed literature on the acceptance of in-home care technology among older adults and identified six factors that influence their acceptance: concerns about technology, expected benefits, technology needs, technology alternatives, social influences, and older adult characteristics, with a focus on differences between pre- and post-implementation factors. Chen and Chan ( 2014 ) constructed the STAM by administering a questionnaire to 1012 older adults and adding eight important factors, including technology anxiety, self-efficacy, cognitive ability, and physical function, based on the TAM. This enriches the theoretical foundation of the field. In addition, Braun ( 2013 ) highlighted the role of perceived usefulness, trust in social networks, and frequency of Internet use in older adults’ use of social networks, while ease of use and social pressure were not significant influences. These findings contribute to the study of older adults’ technology acceptance within specific technology application domains.

Recent research has focused on empirical studies of personal factors and emerging technologies. Ma et al. ( 2016 ) identified key personal factors affecting smartphone acceptance among older adults through structured questionnaires and face-to-face interviews with 120 participants. The study found that cost, self-satisfaction, and convenience were important factors influencing perceived usefulness and ease of use. This study offers empirical evidence to comprehend the main factors that drive smartphone acceptance among Chinese older adults. Additionally, Yusif et al. ( 2016 ) presented an overview of the obstacles that hinder older adults’ acceptance of assistive technologies, focusing on privacy, trust, and functionality.

In summary, research on older adults’ technology acceptance has shifted from early theoretical deepening and analysis of influencing factors to empirical studies in the areas of personal factors and emerging technologies, which have greatly enriched the theoretical basis of older adults’ technology acceptance and provided practical guidance for the design of emerging technology products.

Research hotspots, evolutionary trends, and quality distribution (RQ4)

Core keywords analysis.

Keywords concise the main idea and core of the literature, and are a refined summary of the research content (Huang et al. 2021 ). In CiteSpace, nodes with a centrality value greater than 0.1 are considered to be critical nodes. Analyzing keywords with high frequency and centrality helps to visualize the hot topics in the research field (Park et al. 2018 ). The merged keywords were imported into CiteSpace, and the top 10 keywords were counted and sorted by frequency and centrality respectively, as shown in Table 9 . The results show that the keyword “TAM” has the highest frequency (92), followed by “UTAUT” (24), which reflects that the in-depth study of the existing technology acceptance model and its theoretical expansion occupy a central position in research related to older adults’ technology acceptance. Furthermore, the terms ‘assistive technology’ and ‘virtual reality’ are both high-frequency and high-centrality terms (frequency = 17, centrality = 0.10), indicating that the research on assistive technology and virtual reality for older adults is the focus of current academic attention.

Research hotspots analysis

Using VOSviewer for keyword co-occurrence analysis organizes keywords into groups or clusters based on their intrinsic connections and frequencies, clearly highlighting the research field’s hot topics. The connectivity among keywords reveals correlations between different topics. To ensure accuracy, the analysis only considered the authors’ keywords. Subsequently, the keywords were filtered by setting the keyword frequency to 5 to obtain the keyword clustering map of the research on older adults’ technology acceptance research keyword clustering mapping (Fig. 7 ), combined with the keyword co-occurrence clustering network (Fig. 7A ) and the corresponding density situation (Fig. 7B ) to make a detailed analysis of the following four groups of clustered themes.

A Co-occurrence clustering network. B Keyword density.

Cluster #1—Research on the factors influencing technology adoption among older adults is a prominent topic, covering age, gender, self-efficacy, attitude, and and intention to use (Berkowsky et al. 2017 ; Wang et al. 2017 ). It also examined older adults’ attitudes towards and acceptance of digital health technologies (Ahmad and Mozelius, 2022 ). Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic, significantly impacting older adults’ technology attitudes and usage, has underscored the study’s importance and urgency. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct in-depth studies on how older adults accept, adopt, and effectively use new technologies, to address their needs and help them overcome the digital divide within digital inclusion. This will improve their quality of life and healthcare experiences.

Cluster #2—Research focuses on how older adults interact with assistive technologies, especially assistive robots and health monitoring devices, emphasizing trust, usability, and user experience as crucial factors (Halim et al. 2022 ). Moreover, health monitoring technologies effectively track and manage health issues common in older adults, like dementia and mild cognitive impairment (Lussier et al. 2018 ; Piau et al. 2019 ). Interactive exercise games and virtual reality have been deployed to encourage more physical and cognitive engagement among older adults (Campo-Prieto et al. 2021 ). Personalized and innovative technology significantly enhances older adults’ participation, improving their health and well-being.

Cluster #3—Optimizing health management for older adults using mobile technology. With the development of mobile health (mHealth) and health information technology, mobile applications, smartphones, and smart wearable devices have become effective tools to help older users better manage chronic conditions, conduct real-time health monitoring, and even receive telehealth services (Dupuis and Tsotsos 2018 ; Olmedo-Aguirre et al. 2022 ; Kim et al. 2014 ). Additionally, these technologies can mitigate the problem of healthcare resource inequality, especially in developing countries. Older adults’ acceptance and use of these technologies are significantly influenced by their behavioral intentions, motivational factors, and self-management skills. These internal motivational factors, along with external factors, jointly affect older adults’ performance in health management and quality of life.

Cluster #4—Research on technology-assisted home care for older adults is gaining popularity. Environmentally assisted living enhances older adults’ independence and comfort at home, offering essential support and security. This has a crucial impact on promoting healthy aging (Friesen et al. 2016 ; Wahlroos et al. 2023 ). The smart home is a core application in this field, providing a range of solutions that facilitate independent living for the elderly in a highly integrated and user-friendly manner. This fulfills different dimensions of living and health needs (Majumder et al. 2017 ). Moreover, eHealth offers accurate and personalized health management and healthcare services for older adults (Delmastro et al. 2018 ), ensuring their needs are met at home. Research in this field often employs qualitative methods and structural equation modeling to fully understand older adults’ needs and experiences at home and analyze factors influencing technology adoption.

Evolutionary trends analysis

To gain a deeper understanding of the evolutionary trends in research hotspots within the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, we conducted a statistical analysis of the average appearance times of keywords, using CiteSpace to generate the time-zone evolution mapping (Fig. 8 ) and burst keywords. The time-zone mapping visually displays the evolution of keywords over time, intuitively reflecting the frequency and initial appearance of keywords in research, commonly used to identify trends in research topics (Jing et al. 2024a ; Kumar et al. 2021 ). Table 10 lists the top 15 keywords by burst strength, with the red sections indicating high-frequency citations and their burst strength in specific years. These burst keywords reveal the focus and trends of research themes over different periods (Kleinberg 2002 ). Combining insights from the time-zone mapping and burst keywords provides more objective and accurate research insights (Wang et al. 2023b ).

Reflecting the frequency and time of first appearance of keywords in the study.

An integrated analysis of Fig. 8 and Table 10 shows that early research on older adults’ technology acceptance primarily focused on factors such as perceived usefulness, ease of use, and attitudes towards information technology, including their use of computers and the internet (Pan and Jordan-Marsh 2010 ), as well as differences in technology use between older adults and other age groups (Guner and Acarturk 2020 ). Subsequently, the research focus expanded to improving the quality of life for older adults, exploring how technology can optimize health management and enhance the possibility of independent living, emphasizing the significant role of technology in improving the quality of life for the elderly. With ongoing technological advancements, recent research has shifted towards areas such as “virtual reality,” “telehealth,” and “human-robot interaction,” with a focus on the user experience of older adults (Halim et al. 2022 ). The appearance of keywords such as “physical activity” and “exercise” highlights the value of technology in promoting physical activity and health among older adults. This phase of research tends to make cutting-edge technology genuinely serve the practical needs of older adults, achieving its widespread application in daily life. Additionally, research has focused on expanding and quantifying theoretical models of older adults’ technology acceptance, involving keywords such as “perceived risk”, “validation” and “UTAUT”.

In summary, from 2013 to 2023, the field of older adults’ technology acceptance has evolved from initial explorations of influencing factors, to comprehensive enhancements in quality of life and health management, and further to the application and deepening of theoretical models and cutting-edge technologies. This research not only reflects the diversity and complexity of the field but also demonstrates a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of older adults’ interactions with technology across various life scenarios and needs.

Research quality distribution

To reveal the distribution of research quality in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, a strategic diagram analysis is employed to calculate and illustrate the internal development and interrelationships among various research themes (Xie et al. 2020 ). The strategic diagram uses Centrality as the X-axis and Density as the Y-axis to divide into four quadrants, where the X-axis represents the strength of the connection between thematic clusters and other themes, with higher values indicating a central position in the research field; the Y-axis indicates the level of development within the thematic clusters, with higher values denoting a more mature and widely recognized field (Li and Zhou 2020 ).

Through cluster analysis and manual verification, this study categorized 61 core keywords (Frequency ≥5) into 11 thematic clusters. Subsequently, based on the keywords covered by each thematic cluster, the research themes and their directions for each cluster were summarized (Table 11 ), and the centrality and density coordinates for each cluster were precisely calculated (Table 12 ). Finally, a strategic diagram of the older adults’ technology acceptance research field was constructed (Fig. 9 ). Based on the distribution of thematic clusters across the quadrants in the strategic diagram, the structure and developmental trends of the field were interpreted.

Classification and visualization of theme clusters based on density and centrality.

As illustrated in Fig. 9 , (1) the theme clusters of #3 Usage Experience and #4 Assisted Living Technology are in the first quadrant, characterized by high centrality and density. Their internal cohesion and close links with other themes indicate their mature development, systematic research content or directions have been formed, and they have a significant influence on other themes. These themes play a central role in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance and have promising prospects. (2) The theme clusters of #6 Smart Devices, #9 Theoretical Models, and #10 Mobile Health Applications are in the second quadrant, with higher density but lower centrality. These themes have strong internal connections but weaker external links, indicating that these three themes have received widespread attention from researchers and have been the subject of related research, but more as self-contained systems and exhibit independence. Therefore, future research should further explore in-depth cooperation and cross-application with other themes. (3) The theme clusters of #7 Human-Robot Interaction, #8 Characteristics of the Elderly, and #11 Research Methods are in the third quadrant, with lower centrality and density. These themes are loosely connected internally and have weak links with others, indicating their developmental immaturity. Compared to other topics, they belong to the lower attention edge and niche themes, and there is a need for further investigation. (4) The theme clusters of #1 Digital Healthcare Technology, #2 Psychological Factors, and #5 Socio-Cultural Factors are located in the fourth quadrant, with high centrality but low density. Although closely associated with other research themes, the internal cohesion within these clusters is relatively weak. This suggests that while these themes are closely linked to other research areas, their own development remains underdeveloped, indicating a core immaturity. Nevertheless, these themes are crucial within the research domain of elderly technology acceptance and possess significant potential for future exploration.

Discussion on distribution power (RQ1)

Over the past decade, academic interest and influence in the area of older adults’ technology acceptance have significantly increased. This trend is evidenced by a quantitative analysis of publication and citation volumes, particularly noticeable in 2019 and 2022, where there was a substantial rise in both metrics. The rise is closely linked to the widespread adoption of emerging technologies such as smart homes, wearable devices, and telemedicine among older adults. While these technologies have enhanced their quality of life, they also pose numerous challenges, sparking extensive research into their acceptance, usage behaviors, and influencing factors among the older adults (Pirzada et al. 2022 ; Garcia Reyes et al. 2023 ). Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in technology demand among older adults, especially in areas like medical consultation, online socialization, and health management, further highlighting the importance and challenges of technology. Health risks and social isolation have compelled older adults to rely on technology for daily activities, accelerating its adoption and application within this demographic. This phenomenon has made technology acceptance a critical issue, driving societal and academic focus on the study of technology acceptance among older adults.

The flow of knowledge at the level of high-output disciplines and journals, along with the primary publishing outlets, indicates the highly interdisciplinary nature of research into older adults’ technology acceptance. This reflects the complexity and breadth of issues related to older adults’ technology acceptance, necessitating the integration of multidisciplinary knowledge and approaches. Currently, research is primarily focused on medical health and human-computer interaction, demonstrating academic interest in improving health and quality of life for older adults and addressing the urgent needs related to their interactions with technology. In the field of medical health, research aims to provide advanced and innovative healthcare technologies and services to meet the challenges of an aging population while improving the quality of life for older adults (Abdi et al. 2020 ; Wilson et al. 2021 ). In the field of human-computer interaction, research is focused on developing smarter and more user-friendly interaction models to meet the needs of older adults in the digital age, enabling them to actively participate in social activities and enjoy a higher quality of life (Sayago, 2019 ). These studies are crucial for addressing the challenges faced by aging societies, providing increased support and opportunities for the health, welfare, and social participation of older adults.

Discussion on research power (RQ2)

This study analyzes leading countries and collaboration networks, core institutions and authors, revealing the global research landscape and distribution of research strength in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, and presents quantitative data on global research trends. From the analysis of country distribution and collaborations, China and the USA hold dominant positions in this field, with developed countries like the UK, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands also excelling in international cooperation and research influence. The significant investment in technological research and the focus on the technological needs of older adults by many developed countries reflect their rapidly aging societies, policy support, and resource allocation.

China is the only developing country that has become a major contributor in this field, indicating its growing research capabilities and high priority given to aging societies and technological innovation. Additionally, China has close collaborations with countries such as USA, the UK, and Malaysia, driven not only by technological research needs but also by shared challenges and complementarities in aging issues among these nations. For instance, the UK has extensive experience in social welfare and aging research, providing valuable theoretical guidance and practical experience. International collaborations, aimed at addressing the challenges of aging, integrate the strengths of various countries, advancing in-depth and widespread development in the research of technology acceptance among older adults.

At the institutional and author level, City University of Hong Kong leads in publication volume, with research teams led by Chan and Chen demonstrating significant academic activity and contributions. Their research primarily focuses on older adults’ acceptance and usage behaviors of various technologies, including smartphones, smart wearables, and social robots (Chen et al. 2015 ; Li et al. 2019 ; Ma et al. 2016 ). These studies, targeting specific needs and product characteristics of older adults, have developed new models of technology acceptance based on existing frameworks, enhancing the integration of these technologies into their daily lives and laying a foundation for further advancements in the field. Although Tilburg University has a smaller publication output, it holds significant influence in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. Particularly, the high citation rate of Peek’s studies highlights their excellence in research. Peek extensively explored older adults’ acceptance and usage of home care technologies, revealing the complexity and dynamics of their technology use behaviors. His research spans from identifying systemic influencing factors (Peek et al. 2014 ; Peek et al. 2016 ), emphasizing familial impacts (Luijkx et al. 2015 ), to constructing comprehensive models (Peek et al. 2017 ), and examining the dynamics of long-term usage (Peek et al. 2019 ), fully reflecting the evolving technology landscape and the changing needs of older adults. Additionally, the ongoing contributions of researchers like Ziefle, Rogers, and Wouters in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance demonstrate their research influence and leadership. These researchers have significantly enriched the knowledge base in this area with their diverse perspectives. For instance, Ziefle has uncovered the complex attitudes of older adults towards technology usage, especially the trade-offs between privacy and security, and how different types of activities affect their privacy needs (Maidhof et al. 2023 ; Mujirishvili et al. 2023 ; Schomakers and Ziefle 2023 ; Wilkowska et al. 2022 ), reflecting a deep exploration and ongoing innovation in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance.

Discussion on knowledge base and thematic progress (RQ3)

Through co-citation analysis and systematic review of seminal literature, this study reveals the knowledge foundation and thematic progress in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. Co-citation networks and cluster analyses illustrate the structural themes of the research, delineating the differentiation and boundaries within this field. Additionally, burst detection analysis offers a valuable perspective for understanding the thematic evolution in the field of technology acceptance among older adults. The development and innovation of theoretical models are foundational to this research. Researchers enhance the explanatory power of constructed models by deepening and expanding existing technology acceptance theories to address theoretical limitations. For instance, Heerink et al. ( 2010 ) modified and expanded the UTAUT model by integrating functional assessment and social interaction variables to create the almere model. This model significantly enhances the ability to explain the intentions of older users in utilizing assistive social agents and improves the explanation of actual usage behaviors. Additionally, Chen and Chan ( 2014 ) extended the TAM to include age-related health and capability features of older adults, creating the STAM, which substantially improves predictions of older adults’ technology usage behaviors. Personal attributes, health and capability features, and facilitating conditions have a direct impact on technology acceptance. These factors more effectively predict older adults’ technology usage behaviors than traditional attitudinal factors.

With the advancement of technology and the application of emerging technologies, new research topics have emerged, increasingly focusing on older adults’ acceptance and use of these technologies. Prior to this, the study by Mitzner et al. ( 2010 ) challenged the stereotype of older adults’ conservative attitudes towards technology, highlighting the central roles of usability and usefulness in the technology acceptance process. This discovery laid an important foundation for subsequent research. Research fields such as “smart home technology,” “social life,” and “customer service” are emerging, indicating a shift in focus towards the practical and social applications of technology in older adults’ lives. Research not only focuses on the technology itself but also on how these technologies integrate into older adults’ daily lives and how they can improve the quality of life through technology. For instance, studies such as those by Ma et al. ( 2016 ), Hoque and Sorwar ( 2017 ), and Li et al. ( 2019 ) have explored factors influencing older adults’ use of smartphones, mHealth, and smart wearable devices.

Furthermore, the diversification of research methodologies and innovation in evaluation techniques, such as the use of mixed methods, structural equation modeling (SEM), and neural network (NN) approaches, have enhanced the rigor and reliability of the findings, enabling more precise identification of the factors and mechanisms influencing technology acceptance. Talukder et al. ( 2020 ) employed an effective multimethodological strategy by integrating SEM and NN to leverage the complementary strengths of both approaches, thus overcoming their individual limitations and more accurately analyzing and predicting older adults’ acceptance of wearable health technologies (WHT). SEM is utilized to assess the determinants’ impact on the adoption of WHT, while neural network models validate SEM outcomes and predict the significance of key determinants. This combined approach not only boosts the models’ reliability and explanatory power but also provides a nuanced understanding of the motivations and barriers behind older adults’ acceptance of WHT, offering deep research insights.

Overall, co-citation analysis of the literature in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance has uncovered deeper theoretical modeling and empirical studies on emerging technologies, while emphasizing the importance of research methodological and evaluation innovations in understanding complex social science issues. These findings are crucial for guiding the design and marketing strategies of future technology products, especially in the rapidly growing market of older adults.

Discussion on research hotspots and evolutionary trends (RQ4)

By analyzing core keywords, we can gain deep insights into the hot topics, evolutionary trends, and quality distribution of research in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. The frequent occurrence of the keywords “TAM” and “UTAUT” indicates that the applicability and theoretical extension of existing technology acceptance models among older adults remain a focal point in academia. This phenomenon underscores the enduring influence of the studies by Davis ( 1989 ) and Venkatesh et al. ( 2003 ), whose models provide a robust theoretical framework for explaining and predicting older adults’ acceptance and usage of emerging technologies. With the widespread application of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data technologies, these theoretical models have incorporated new variables such as perceived risk, trust, and privacy issues (Amin et al. 2024 ; Chen et al. 2024 ; Jing et al. 2024b ; Seibert et al. 2021 ; Wang et al. 2024b ), advancing the theoretical depth and empirical research in this field.

Keyword co-occurrence cluster analysis has revealed multiple research hotspots in the field, including factors influencing technology adoption, interactive experiences between older adults and assistive technologies, the application of mobile health technology in health management, and technology-assisted home care. These studies primarily focus on enhancing the quality of life and health management of older adults through emerging technologies, particularly in the areas of ambient assisted living, smart health monitoring, and intelligent medical care. In these domains, the role of AI technology is increasingly significant (Qian et al. 2021 ; Ho 2020 ). With the evolution of next-generation information technologies, AI is increasingly integrated into elder care systems, offering intelligent, efficient, and personalized service solutions by analyzing the lifestyles and health conditions of older adults. This integration aims to enhance older adults’ quality of life in aspects such as health monitoring and alerts, rehabilitation assistance, daily health management, and emotional support (Lee et al. 2023 ). A survey indicates that 83% of older adults prefer AI-driven solutions when selecting smart products, demonstrating the increasing acceptance of AI in elder care (Zhao and Li 2024 ). Integrating AI into elder care presents both opportunities and challenges, particularly in terms of user acceptance, trust, and long-term usage effects, which warrant further exploration (Mhlanga 2023 ). These studies will help better understand the profound impact of AI technology on the lifestyles of older adults and provide critical references for optimizing AI-driven elder care services.

The Time-zone evolution mapping and burst keyword analysis further reveal the evolutionary trends of research hotspots. Early studies focused on basic technology acceptance models and user perceptions, later expanding to include quality of life and health management. In recent years, research has increasingly focused on cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality, telehealth, and human-robot interaction, with a concurrent emphasis on the user experience of older adults. This evolutionary process demonstrates a deepening shift from theoretical models to practical applications, underscoring the significant role of technology in enhancing the quality of life for older adults. Furthermore, the strategic coordinate mapping analysis clearly demonstrates the development and mutual influence of different research themes. High centrality and density in the themes of Usage Experience and Assisted Living Technology indicate their mature research status and significant impact on other themes. The themes of Smart Devices, Theoretical Models, and Mobile Health Applications demonstrate self-contained research trends. The themes of Human-Robot Interaction, Characteristics of the Elderly, and Research Methods are not yet mature, but they hold potential for development. Themes of Digital Healthcare Technology, Psychological Factors, and Socio-Cultural Factors are closely related to other themes, displaying core immaturity but significant potential.

In summary, the research hotspots in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance are diverse and dynamic, demonstrating the academic community’s profound understanding of how older adults interact with technology across various life contexts and needs. Under the influence of AI and big data, research should continue to focus on the application of emerging technologies among older adults, exploring in depth how they adapt to and effectively use these technologies. This not only enhances the quality of life and healthcare experiences for older adults but also drives ongoing innovation and development in this field.

Research agenda

Based on the above research findings, to further understand and promote technology acceptance and usage among older adults, we recommend future studies focus on refining theoretical models, exploring long-term usage, and assessing user experience in the following detailed aspects:

Refinement and validation of specific technology acceptance models for older adults: Future research should focus on developing and validating technology acceptance models based on individual characteristics, particularly considering variations in technology acceptance among older adults across different educational levels and cultural backgrounds. This includes factors such as age, gender, educational background, and cultural differences. Additionally, research should examine how well specific technologies, such as wearable devices and mobile health applications, meet the needs of older adults. Building on existing theoretical models, this research should integrate insights from multiple disciplines such as psychology, sociology, design, and engineering through interdisciplinary collaboration to create more accurate and comprehensive models, which should then be validated in relevant contexts.

Deepening the exploration of the relationship between long-term technology use and quality of life among older adults: The acceptance and use of technology by users is a complex and dynamic process (Seuwou et al. 2016 ). Existing research predominantly focuses on older adults’ initial acceptance or short-term use of new technologies; however, the impact of long-term use on their quality of life and health is more significant. Future research should focus on the evolution of older adults’ experiences and needs during long-term technology usage, and the enduring effects of technology on their social interactions, mental health, and life satisfaction. Through longitudinal studies and qualitative analysis, this research reveals the specific needs and challenges of older adults in long-term technology use, providing a basis for developing technologies and strategies that better meet their requirements. This understanding aids in comprehensively assessing the impact of technology on older adults’ quality of life and guiding the optimization and improvement of technological products.

Evaluating the Importance of User Experience in Research on Older Adults’ Technology Acceptance: Understanding the mechanisms of information technology acceptance and use is central to human-computer interaction research. Although technology acceptance models and user experience models differ in objectives, they share many potential intersections. Technology acceptance research focuses on structured prediction and assessment, while user experience research concentrates on interpreting design impacts and new frameworks. Integrating user experience to assess older adults’ acceptance of technology products and systems is crucial (Codfrey et al. 2022 ; Wang et al. 2019 ), particularly for older users, where specific product designs should emphasize practicality and usability (Fisk et al. 2020 ). Researchers need to explore innovative age-appropriate design methods to enhance older adults’ usage experience. This includes studying older users’ actual usage preferences and behaviors, optimizing user interfaces, and interaction designs. Integrating feedback from older adults to tailor products to their needs can further promote their acceptance and continued use of technology products.

Conclusions

This study conducted a systematic review of the literature on older adults’ technology acceptance over the past decade through bibliometric analysis, focusing on the distribution power, research power, knowledge base and theme progress, research hotspots, evolutionary trends, and quality distribution. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this study has reached the following conclusions:

Technology acceptance among older adults has become a hot topic in the international academic community, involving the integration of knowledge across multiple disciplines, including Medical Informatics, Health Care Sciences Services, and Ergonomics. In terms of journals, “PSYCHOLOGY, EDUCATION, HEALTH” represents a leading field, with key publications including Computers in Human Behavior , Journal of Medical Internet Research , and International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction . These journals possess significant academic authority and extensive influence in the field.

Research on technology acceptance among older adults is particularly active in developed countries, with China and USA publishing significantly more than other nations. The Netherlands leads in high average citation rates, indicating the depth and impact of its research. Meanwhile, the UK stands out in terms of international collaboration. At the institutional level, City University of Hong Kong and The University of Hong Kong in China are in leading positions. Tilburg University in the Netherlands demonstrates exceptional research quality through its high average citation count. At the author level, Chen from China has the highest number of publications, while Peek from the Netherlands has the highest average citation count.

Co-citation analysis of references indicates that the knowledge base in this field is divided into three main categories: theoretical model deepening, emerging technology applications, and research methods and evaluation. Seminal literature focuses on four areas: specific technology use by older adults, expansion of theoretical models of technology acceptance, information technology adoption behavior, and research perspectives. Research themes have evolved from initial theoretical deepening and analysis of influencing factors to empirical studies on individual factors and emerging technologies.

Keyword analysis indicates that TAM and UTAUT are the most frequently occurring terms, while “assistive technology” and “virtual reality” are focal points with high frequency and centrality. Keyword clustering analysis reveals that research hotspots are concentrated on the influencing factors of technology adoption, human-robot interaction experiences, mobile health management, and technology for aging in place. Time-zone evolution mapping and burst keyword analysis have revealed the research evolution from preliminary exploration of influencing factors, to enhancements in quality of life and health management, and onto advanced technology applications and deepening of theoretical models. Furthermore, analysis of research quality distribution indicates that Usage Experience and Assisted Living Technology have become core topics, while Smart Devices, Theoretical Models, and Mobile Health Applications point towards future research directions.

Through this study, we have systematically reviewed the dynamics, core issues, and evolutionary trends in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, constructing a comprehensive Knowledge Mapping of the domain and presenting a clear framework of existing research. This not only lays the foundation for subsequent theoretical discussions and innovative applications in the field but also provides an important reference for relevant scholars.

Limitations

To our knowledge, this is the first bibliometric analysis concerning technology acceptance among older adults, and we adhered strictly to bibliometric standards throughout our research. However, this study relies on the Web of Science Core Collection, and while its authority and breadth are widely recognized, this choice may have missed relevant literature published in other significant databases such as PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar, potentially overlooking some critical academic contributions. Moreover, given that our analysis was confined to literature in English, it may not reflect studies published in other languages, somewhat limiting the global representativeness of our data sample.

It is noteworthy that with the rapid development of AI technology, its increasingly widespread application in elderly care services is significantly transforming traditional care models. AI is profoundly altering the lifestyles of the elderly, from health monitoring and smart diagnostics to intelligent home systems and personalized care, significantly enhancing their quality of life and health care standards. The potential for AI technology within the elderly population is immense, and research in this area is rapidly expanding. However, due to the restrictive nature of the search terms used in this study, it did not fully cover research in this critical area, particularly in addressing key issues such as trust, privacy, and ethics.

Consequently, future research should not only expand data sources, incorporating multilingual and multidatabase literature, but also particularly focus on exploring older adults’ acceptance of AI technology and its applications, in order to construct a more comprehensive academic landscape of older adults’ technology acceptance, thereby enriching and extending the knowledge system and academic trends in this field.

Data availability

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available in the Dataverse repository: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6K0GJH .

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This research was supported by the Social Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province in China (Grant No. 2023J014).

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Curbing the Campus Culture Wars

The left and right are both fueling a growing illiberalism on campus. But there’s a better way.

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A new academic year is upon us, and colleges and universities are still struggling to uphold the norms of free speech and reasonable discourse on campus. Columbia University’s president, Nemat Shafik, suddenly resigned last month after intense scrutiny following a semester of protests and encampments, as did three deans over antisemitic texts. Harvard and UCLA face major lawsuits brought by Jewish students seeking relief for discrimination. There are more examples of the turbulent state of higher education, from intrusive oversight by university systems to reversals on long-held positions against boycotts.

Even though many academics and commentators have explored why higher education has gone off track—and how reformers might course-correct —it is worth stepping back to notice how today’s campus disputes are just one more theater in the culture wars. The intolerance and mutual antipathy of ideological opponents on both the left and the right undermine two of the most important rights and institutions in our liberal democracy: freedom of speech and universities. 

These trends are complicated and have multiple causes. Not every instance is morally equivalent or equally important as another. Yet they are symptoms of a dangerous illiberalism metastasizing on both the left and the right. It is therefore worth thinking carefully about how culture wars corrode liberalism and sabotage civil discourse, and to consider ways to stop them from wreaking more havoc on campus. 

The culture wars, left and right.

Whenever we think of the culture wars, we typically imagine hyper-charged disputes between ideological adversaries seeking to convert their moral superiority into real-world supremacy. But we often miss that culture wars often involve asymmetrical conflicts between those who hold power and those who do not—asymmetries that allow those in power to impose their views on others. 

This dynamic is especially prevalent in higher education. Because progressives dominate colleges and universities, the conflicts often involve a conservative minority pitted against progressives in leadership or student groups that are ideologically aligned with the prevailing campus culture. In the spring of 2023 at Stanford Law School, for example, conservative Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan had a speech shut down by students and a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) dean. Over 500 campus deplatforming incidents have come from the political left over the past decade, according to Greg Lukianoff and Sean Stevens of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). This trend reflects the sobering findings of the Constructive Dialogue Institute , which reported that very liberal students are much more likely than conservative students to be offended by the perspectives of their peers (40 percent to 20 percent) and to approve the use of social pressure to punish or cancel the offenders (87 percent to 16 percent).

“One-way rights are not rights at all; they are just naked power dressed up in the clothing of liberty.”

But in many cases, asymmetries cut in the other direction, too. Right-led speaker cancellations also number in the hundreds, according to Lukianoff and Stevens. Republican lawmakers have implemented sweeping policies that, in the effort to curb DEI and critical race theory excesses, seek to ban controversial ideas and censor speech as well as punish professors who dissent. Sometimes, they even try to overhaul entire institutions. Witness the heavy-handed leadership at the New College of Florida, where senior leaders have denied tenure to or refused to renew the contracts of faculty who oppose the administration’s efforts to ideologically overhaul the college.

This is one of the first things that we should acknowledge when assessing what the culture war looks like on campus today. Both the political left and the right target faculty for holding  unorthodox views in their scholarship, teaching, public commentary, or for criticizing their institutions. Of the 1,300 incidents tracked in FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire Database , 49 percent come from the left and 44 percent come from the right. Only 7 percent have no political valence. 

A more ambitious view of speech rights.

Whether in higher education or more broadly, culture wars often follow a familiar trajectory: One group weaponizes institutions and cultural power against the other. To prevent this tendency, liberal societies need robust protections for the rights of minorities, especially when they have little institutional leverage or cultural clout. 

Of course, everyone likes rights in the abstract. Our country is awash in rights-talk. But it turns out that people are often more jealous of their own rights than zealous about protecting the rights of those whose views they deem to be unacceptable. They only become enthusiastic about rights when they no longer have power. Rights for me, but not for thee . But one-way rights are not rights at all; they are just naked power dressed up in the clothing of liberty. 

What is required, then, is a cultural commitment to upholding the rights of all. At minimum, this commitment can be motivated by the self-interested reason that sometimes our group will not possess much institutional power. We cannot protect our own rights while curtailing the rights of others. But we should also be more ambitious; we should strive for something more durable than a pact born out of the threat of mutually assured destruction. It would be better if we wholeheartedly committed ourselves to mutually protecting rights because we agreed that they undergird a free and flourishing society. 

Liberty and diversity cannot coexist without tolerance. A liberal culture is one in which people have a wide degree of freedom to follow the dictates of their consciences and live life as they see fit, so long as they do not harm others. A person with a liberal temperament does not view disagreements or differences—even profound ones—as a threat. He or she may have strong political and moral views but respects the rights of others to have an equal place in society and under the law. This principle is codified in the First Amendment and has helped make the United States the most diverse, free, and prosperous society in the world.

But this liberal way of life is caught in the culture-war crossfire between illiberal forces who would silence dissent and enforce ideological conformity. Freedom of speech is not the only casualty—so is the pursuit of truth. It turns out that we should value freedom of speech not only because it is a fundamental right but also because we value the truth and recognize our own fallibility. As the philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote:

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

Mill goes on to argue in On Liberty that when we silence the views of others, we assume our own infallibility. But because we might be wrong, we should refrain from silencing dissenting voices. Only when we rigorously engage with dissenting views, even wrong views, can we better understand and defend important truths. Epistemic humility is an essential liberal virtue.

Unfortunately, Mill’s view has little purchase on either side of the culture wars, especially in higher education. Culture warriors fight not for the truth but for their tribes. They have principles, to be sure, but their moral zeal, their epistemic certainty, and their tribal loyalty render them incapable of civil disagreement and susceptible to zero-sum thinking. They often succumb to the temptation to marginalize, silence, and coerce their opponents—trends that impoverish our national discourse and undermine the credibility and mission of colleges and universities. 

Perhaps nowhere is the freedom of speech and the principle of open inquiry more important than in higher education. Reasoned speech and inquiry are the foundation of the academic and civic missions of higher education: to seek the truth together through rigorous yet respectful discourse, and to prepare students for democratic citizenship in a diverse society.

In the higher ed culture wars, shouted-down speakers and fired professors may be the targets of opportunity, but students are the collateral damage. The erosion of the norms of civil discourse in the academy is taking a toll on students’ capacity to engage in healthy dialogue across diverging views. As often as not, students are self-censoring and censorious. A recent survey from the College Pulse and FIRE indicates that less than half of them feel comfortable sharing their views on a controversial topic in the classroom or in their campus residences. Over 30 percent believe it is at least sometimes acceptable to shout down a campus speaker. 

Improving campus discourse.

Although the warring factions may never reach a rapprochement, there is much we can do to restore liberal commitments to free speech and reasoned discourse. Cooling off the higher education culture wars will require state lawmakers, in their efforts to shore up the integrity of our public colleges and universities, to avoid censorship and the politicization of public university governance. Furthermore, colleges and universities should pursue three sets of reforms. 

First, colleges and universities should strengthen their protections for all speech—including controversial and offensive speech—by students, faculty, and invited speakers. Free expression and academic freedom are the sine qua non of the academy, but they become meaningless if only some views are deemed acceptable. In particular, administrators should ensure that time, place, and manner restrictions are content-neutral and equitably enforced. 

Second, colleges and universities should encourage respectful yet robust dialogue across diverse viewpoints. Reversing the trends of affective polarization and self-censorship will require institutions to create spaces through forums, orientations, and gen ed courses for people to disagree with each other in good faith. This requires cultivating empathy and civility and promoting dialogue that employs reasons and evidence rather than dogma and emotion. Faculty and administrators should model these norms for their students.

Finally, colleges and universities should work to enhance viewpoint diversity. Colleges and universities should make concerted efforts to balance the predominantly left-leaning views on campus by hiring ideologically diverse professors and bringing thoughtful conservative speakers to engage with students. Likewise, conservative institutions should commit to viewpoint diversity and uphold the academic freedom of dissenting liberal faculty. Students—who may come from homogeneous communities—should be exposed to peers with different views and experiences. The virtue of toleration on which our democracy depends cannot be practiced in a monoculture.

These reforms would aim to create a space for the rigorous pursuit of knowledge and for students to be habituated in the civic virtues that are indispensable to sustaining liberalism in a pluralistic society. Higher education is not merely an incubator of ideas; it is an inculcator of culture. Colleges and universities can train the next generation of antiliberal culture warriors, or they can educate the next generation of citizens of our liberal democracy. The academy will always be a contested space, but it does not have to be a battlefield in the culture wars. 

Matthew Kuchem

Matthew Kuchem is director of outreach at the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University and a former political science professor.

Please note that we at  The Dispatch  hold ourselves, our work, and our commenters to a higher standard than other places on the internet. We welcome comments that foster genuine debate or discussion—including comments critical of us or our work—but responses that include ad hominem attacks on fellow Dispatch members or are intended to stoke fear and anger may be moderated.

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