Mandates drive up vaccinations at colleges, despite leniency

Universities that adopted COVID-19 vaccine mandates this fall have seen widespread compliance even though many schools made it easy to get out of the shots by granting exemptions to nearly any student who requested one.

Facing pockets of resistance and scattered lawsuits, colleges have tread carefully because forcing students to get the vaccine when they have a religious or medical objection could put schools into tricky legal territory. For some, there are added concerns that taking a hard line could lead to a drop in enrollment.

Still, universities with mandates report much higher vaccination rates than communities around them, even in places with high vaccine hesitancy. Some universities have seen nearly complete compliance, including at state flagship schools in Maryland, Illinois and Washington, helping them avoid large outbreaks like those that disrupted classes a year ago.

Since announcing its mandate two months ago, Ohio University students and employees who reported being vaccinated at its Athens campus shot up from 69% to almost 85%.

“Educating and encouraging was only getting us so far,” said Gillian Ice, a professor of social medicine who is overseeing the school's pandemic response. “We had a lot who were on the fence. They weren’t necessarily anti-vaccine. They didn’t think they were high risk.”

School administrators are watching closely to see how the mandate affects enrollment, she said. Some students are likely to transfer, but there's also a less vocal group who support the requirement and would not have come to campus without it, Ice said.

At least 1,100 colleges and universities now require proof of COVID-19 vaccines, according to tracking by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Some schools told students last spring they would need to be vaccinated...