Brown University is requiring Covid vaccines for all students who have in-person instruction this … [+]
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A new survey shows that 85% of incoming college students are willing to comply with campus vaccine requirements.
An increasing number of schools including Rutgers, Cornell and Brown have announced that they will only allow students who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 to attend face-to-face classes and live in college residences.
The online survey was conducted in early March by Maguire Associates, a Concord, Massachusetts-based company that advises schools on how to maximize enrollment. Founded in 1983 by former Boston College dean of admissions Jack Maguire, its customers have included Duke, Pepperdine and Washington University in St. Louis. Maguire, 80, coined the term “enrollment management” in the 1970s. He serves as the privately held company’s chairman. His son Matt is vice president of client services and product development.
Matt Maguire says the company did not do the survey in response to a request from clients. Instead he and his colleagues started discussing the need for data gathering on student and parent sentiment last year as schools were grappling with what sort of Covid safety measures to implement, including mask wearing and social distancing.
The firm emailed a total of 1.2 million people. They included students and family members who had inquired about enrolling at Maguire Associates-client schools. Some 19,000 individuals responded to the emails and filled out online surveys between March 7 and 11. Of the respondents, the vast majority—15,600—were students. The rest were parents.
The surveyed group is not a true national sample of college students since Maguire’s customers do not include community colleges, which serve more than 40% of U.S. undergraduates. Thus the family incomes of the Maguire respondents skew higher than the incomes of college students nationwide. Nevertheless the survey results suggest that students are willing to get vaccinated if it means they can attend college on campus.
They’re also overwhelmingly comfortable with other Covid safety measures. Upward of 90% of respondents said they would comply with campus mask-wearing and social distancing requirements by colleges.
The survey found the most vaccine resistance among a group of 1,430 respondents it refers to as “Freedom First.” Some 67% of the people in this group said they were not comfortable with the idea of getting the vaccine.
Matt Maguire says he and his colleagues were not surprised with the survey results. “Just about everyone wants to return to some form of 2019 normalcy,” he says. But many colleges are still wrestling with what sort of restrictions to impose on students, as Republican governors in states like Texas are signing executive orders barring vaccine requirements at colleges that receive state funds. “Confirming what we expected is just as valuable as making unexpected discoveries,” says Maguire
