We measured every .edu site Google has field data for. Only 48.3% pass Core Web Vitals on mobile. Higher education builds stable, responsive pages that are slow to load, and the enormous long tail of department and course sites is why.
Source: Source: PageSpeed Matters analysis of 34,321 .edu origins with CrUX field data, May 2026.
Stability is the highest of any sector because academic pages are text-heavy and stable. Loading is the lone weak metric, and it caps the sector under 50%.
Source: Source: PageSpeed Matters, mobile 75th-percentile field readings, May 2026.
A heavy interactive physics tool loaded on the homepage is the slowest recognizable .edu site at 8.1 seconds, roughly six times the fast leaders.
Source: University Website Speed: Fewer Than Half of .edu Sites Pass Core Web Vitals - PageSpeed Matters