Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on Higher Education. A Bibliometric Perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically contributed to the change of the educational process. In higher education, teaching and pedagogy, evaluation, as well as experiences of students and teachers have changed profoundly from the beginning of the pandemic to the present. The educational process shifted from face-to-face interactions to online distance learning, changing many aspects of the conventional educational process. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of studies on the COVID-19 impact on higher education. We used bibliometric analysis to unfold how higher education institutions responded and adapted to the pandemic context as well as to the social distancing measures. By analyzing the main occurring terms with the support of the VOS program, we scrutinize the papers written from the beginning of the pandemic and indexed in the Web of Science database. The analysis of the publications from 2020 to 2022 showed, at the beginning, a research focus mainly on the negative effects of the pandemic. But then, diversity of topics increased, shifting to technological acceptance, quality of education and its outcomes, satisfaction with teaching and learning, or quality of life of all actors. The focus on the psychological well-being and mental health issues remained a constant for the entire period. The results are leading to a better understanding of how higher education institutions have adapted to the pandemic context and of the main trends in the field.