LONGITUDINAL REPORT
2017–2026 Browser & Device Readiness Trends
The full nine-year data analysis — 131,418 scans • 9 years • one readiness story
131,418
Total scans 2017–2026
97.6%
Overall pass rate
73.8 → 81.9 0% → 97%
Avg score 2017 → 2026 TLS 1.3 adoption
Executive summary
This report analyzes 131,418 browser and device readiness scans collected between October 2017 and April 2026 using TechReady.io. It is written for leaders of online degree programs in higher education — student success, retention, online learning, and academic affairs — and framed around the question: what can nine years of readiness data tell us about the students an online program actually serves?
The headline is a measurable, sustained improvement: average readiness scores rose from 73.8 to 81.9, pass rates climbed from 20% (2017) to 100% (2025–2026), and legacy technologies like Flash and Java were almost entirely eliminated. Equally important, the data documents which populations improved fastest and which lagged. The ~30-point score gap between students on mobile carriers and students on home broadband narrowed but never disappeared — the clearest equity signal in the dataset and the most actionable finding for online programs.
Methodology
For institutions running or expanding online programs, the takeaway is simple: student device readiness is a measurable, longitudinal, and improvable variable. It does not appear in LMS engagement reports or help-desk tickets on its own. It becomes visible only when an institution measures it directly — and when measured, it consistently predicts outcomes that retention models otherwise miss.
Each record in the dataset represents one scan event — a single student or user running the readiness check from their browser. Every scan captures device (operating system, browser, screen), network (ISP, download/upload speed, latency), and security posture (plugins, TLS version, cookie and certificate configuration). From these inputs a 0–100 readiness score and a pass/fail decision are produced.
Year-level rollups in this report use the scan's created_at timestamp. 2017 and 2026 are partial years (late October through December, and January through April 22 respectively); readers should interpret the endpoints accordingly. All aggregate statistics are weighted by scan volume unless otherwise noted.
The 9-year arc
The cleanest way to read the dataset is the year-over-year trend. Seven of the ten annual metrics tracked here improved consistently from 2022 onward.
| Year | Scans | Avg Score | Pass Rate | Flash % | TLS 1.3% | Med. Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 1,221 | 73.8 | 20.0% | 46.4% | 0.0% | 37 Mbps |
| 2018 | 11,810 | 75.8 | 82.3% | 27.8% | 44.2% | 25 Mbps |
| 2019 | 18,774 | 69.4 | 99.9% | 9.6% | 71.1% | 28 Mbps |
| 2020 | 43,862 | 69.4 | 99.9% | 6.2% | 89.1% | 31 Mbps |
| 2021 | 19,968 | 72.3 | 100.0% | 1.3% | 92.5% | 47 Mbps |
| 2022 | 10,174 | 77.8 | 99.9% | 0.1% | 94.2% | 70 Mbps |
| 2023 | 8,444 | 77.6 | 99.9% | 0.1% | 94.6% | 86 Mbps |
| 2024 | 7,999 | 77.6 | 100.0% | 0.1% | 95.0% | 101 Mbps |
| 2025 | 7,168 | 80.0 | 100.0% | 0.0% | 95.8% | 132 Mbps |
| 2026* | 1,998 | 81.9 | 100.0% | 0.1% | 96.6% | 146 Mbps |
- 2026 data runs through April 22.
Three patterns worth naming
The 2019–2020 dip was a growth artifact, not a regression: Flash went from installed on 46% of devices (2017) to effectively zero by 2022 — the year Adobe formally blocked it. Java followed the same curve. Internet Explorer, which had the worst pass rate in the dataset at 58.1%, disappeared from scans after 2022.
Infrastructure modernized dramatically: Median download speed quadrupled from 37 Mbps (2017) to 146 Mbps (2026). Upload grew 5x, from 6 Mbps to 32 Mbps. Ping almost halved from 151 ms to 81 ms. TLS 1.3 — the protocol version required by most modern LMS, SSO, and proctoring systems — went from 0% in 2017 to 97% in 2026.
Findings that matter for online programs
The following five findings are consistently highlighted by online degree program leaders as actionable:
Mobile-carrier students are a structural equity gap: Across all years, students whose sessions originated on a mobile carrier network averaged a readiness score of 44.6 — compared to 74.6 for every other connection type. The narrowing of this gap is a clear signal for online programs.
Year Mobile-Carrier Avg Score Other Connection Avg Score Gap (points) 2018 60.0 75.8 15.8 2019 35.3 72.6 37.3 2020 36.8 71.7 34.9 2021 42.2 74.7 32.5 2022 68.4 78.2 9.8 2023 72.1 77.7 5.7 2024 73.3 77.8 4.5 2025 77.0 80.1 3.1 2026 79.5 82.0 2.5 Readiness problems cluster: Of the 3,134 scans that failed outright across the full dataset, 76% had two or more simultaneous issues, indicating a student who reports "my page won't load" often has multiple underlying problems.
Windows 7 and Internet Explorer were the tail that mattered: Windows 7, end-of-life since January 2020, generated significant failures. Their disappearance from the dataset indicates structural improvement.
Mobile OS scores collapsed, then recovered: Mobile users scored low on readiness during 2018-2021 but showed significant improvement thereafter by 2026.
TLS 1.3 adoption is a reliable proxy for modernity: 97% of failing scans were on TLS 1.2 or older, which signifies that outdated protocols correlate with readiness challenges.
Why a longitudinal view changes the conversation
A nine-year longitudinal dataset allows institutions to see not just the current state, but the trajectory — and the drift that happens between measurements.
What this suggests for your institution
The longitudinal data in this report was produced by institutions measuring their own populations continuously, over years, and acting on what the measurement surfaced. The observations from online program leaders indicate a need for consistent measurement to understand student device readiness better.