The present work seeks to analyze the publications made in 2021, indexed in the Science-direct database, about online higher education, during the COVID-19 pandemic, verifying the emerging challenges. A systematic review combined with the PRISMA method is used. At first, 2909 scientific articles were identified. Based on the eligibility criteria, 5 review articles were selected. These were treated in the NVivo program and, from the SQUIRE 2.0 quality scale, 4 were chosen for the systematic review. It is possible to infer that in 2021, the review studies on online higher education, in the area of social sciences, indicate that the challenges are more concentrated in the orbit of the faculty, however, the factors that revolve around the student body well as those relating to information technology should also be considered.