Survey: Most Students Willing to Be Vaccinated

About three-quarters of undergraduates anticipate getting the coronavirus vaccine as soon as it becomes available to them, according to a survey of 1,000 students released today by College Pulse, a research company that polled the college students from Jan. 7 to 15.

The surveyed students’ willingness to be vaccinated was similar to poll responses from college-aged people during the early stages of the pandemic, which found that about a third of adults who are millennials or younger said they would probably or definitely not be vaccinated for COVID-19.

Students of color (45 percent) were less likely than their white peers (57 percent) to say they’re “very likely” to be vaccinated, a blog post outlining the College Pulse results said. Nonwhite students were also more likely to worry about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the blog.

Seventy-one percent of the students surveyed also believe colleges have the right to require them to be vaccinated before coming back to campus for in-person learning, the blog said. Students at private colleges were more likely to say their institutions should be permitted to require a vaccine; 78 percent of students attending these institutions said their college has the right to do so versus 69 percent of public university students who believed the same, the survey found.