There are a mere but meaningful 25 colleges that are still requiring students to take COVID-19 medical treatments prior to fall 2024. However, if you are a healthcare student, mandates persist at the large majority of colleges due to the requirements of the clinical rotation facilities where students must attend practicums in order to graduate.
If you have been following our work for awhile, you will recall that in the spring of 2021, over 1000 colleges and universities in the US announced that students would be required to take COVID-19 shots prior to fall 2021 enrollment. By December of 2021, nearly 325 of those colleges announced that students would be required to take a booster shot by January of 2022 and at least 21 college specifically mandated the bivalent booster shot as soon as it was approved. Most of the colleges that implemented the strictest COVID policies have dropped their COVID-19 shot mandates. As a reminder, you can get a comprehensive overview of when colleges mandated and dropped COVID-19 medical treatment requirements if refer to this spreadsheet on the homepage of our Website. While our work ending the mandates at the remaining 25 colleges is not done, we have largely shifted our efforts to support and increase interest in the colleges that respected informed consent and medical freedom.
For the past few years, we have encouraged families, students and alumni to help us elevate the colleges that NEVER mandated COVID-19 shots. Last week, we added a new tool to the homepage of our Website to help you navigate prospective colleges with your student. If, like most other parents with rising high school seniors, you plan to visit colleges with your student this summer, we created this Google Map for all of you. You can click here or you can visit the homepage of our Website to find the map, www.nocollegemandates.com. If you open the Google Map we created with the Google Map app on your cell phone, it will populate on your cell phone device for ease of navigation while on the road.
To find more details about each of the colleges and universities that NEVER mandated COVID-19 medical treatments, you can click here to see our comprehensive spreadsheet or you can find it posted on the homepage of our Website.
Below are a few considerations when reviewing this spreadsheet:
There are colleges that would have mandated COVID-19 shots if the state in which they are located did not prohibit them from doing so. While executive/legislative orders prevented some of these colleges from mandating COVID-19 medical treatments, the pressure some of these colleges put on some students to take these shots OR participate in repeated testing, wear masks and attend "re-education” sessions about the “safety and efficacy” of the shots created extremely stressful and awful experiences for students who refused these novel treatments. These colleges include University of Miami, Penn State and Purdue. We have tried to make note of the colleges that tortured, pressured, and discriminated against their students who could only exercise their right to bodily autonomy by applying for exemptions, but if we missed any, please let me know in the comments as we continually update our spreadsheets to provide as much helpful information as possible.
Some of these colleges/universities are religiously affiliated and some are small liberal arts institutions that do not offer a full range of degrees so they may not be appropriate choices for your student. There are a wide variety of colleges on the spreadsheet, and if many of the colleges are new to you, be sure to do your research to find out what they offer and to determine if they are the right fit for your student.
Among my favorite colleges on our spreadsheet are those listed below because they “do not accept grants from the federal government or participate in any federal financial-aid or student-loan programs”, and therefore, they remain completely autonomous and independent institutions of higher learning. All but one of the colleges on the list below NEVER had a COVID-19 vaccine mandate indicating to me that they highly value medical freedom. These colleges never found it necessary to remove informed consent and instead empowered students and other community members to decide for themselves what measures to take for personal protection.
Aletheia Christian College (Idaho)
Bethlehem College & Seminary (Minnesota)
Christendom College (Virginia)
Grove City College (Pennsylvania)
Hildegard College (California)
Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary (Tennessee)
New College Franklin (Tennessee)
New Saint Andrews College (Idaho)
Patrick Henry College (Virginia)
Pensacola Christian College (Florida)
Principia College (Illinois) (COVID-19 vaccine mandate but waivers to opt-out were always easily granted)
Sattler College (Massachusetts)
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Kentucky)
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (Texas)
Weimar University (California)
Wyoming Catholic College (Wyoming)
The short list of colleges above and others outlined on our spreadsheet are the institutions of higher education that deserve our support. We must find a way to lift them up and help them grow. Some of them offer the higher education model to replicate, and in fact the Hillsdale College model is being replicated by Jordan Peterson who is in the process of building and launching Peterson Academy. Some of the colleges on the short list above are seeing an unprecedented level of interest and growth, and is it any wonder why?
One other thing to keep in mind. The 500+ colleges on the NEVER mandated COVID-19 shots spreadsheet all receive some level of federal funding. As noted, some of these colleges are prevented by state law from mandating these medical treatments, but there are many colleges on the spreadsheet that did not mandate COVID-19 shots as a condition to accepting or jeopardizing the receipt of renewed or additional federal grants. While federal funding might have been the incentive for some colleges to mandate COVID-19 medical treatments, federal funding incentives do not tell the whole story. We have learned that some colleges mandated COVID-19 shots to appease the fears of faculty/staff, to appease the fears of parents, students and alumni or because they followed the lead of R1 research institutions such as Rutgers and Harvard which were the first two colleges to mandate these medical treatments.
As always, if our list is incorrect or if we missed any colleges/universities that NEVER mandated COVID-19 shots, please let me know in the comments. Please share our Google Map and our spreadsheet with every family that you know to help them choose colleges for their students that most appropriately fit their values.
One final request - each and everyone of us should refuse further donations to our student’s current college or our alma maters that mandated COVID-19 medical treatments with letters explaining that we’d prefer to redirect our donations to colleges that respected informed consent. Some of the most gratifying letters that I have ever written were sent to my son’s colleges and my alma mater explaining why my donations have been directed elsewhere for the past 4 years. Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
As always, thank you for the support.
Will never give a penny to my alma mater Michigan State, nor our daughter’s, UCLA.
Thank you, NCM, for your continued & exhaustive work these past years!! 🙏🏻
So appreciative of your diligence on all this! Many families I know are using your information to help make informed college choices.