International students would be more likely to choose a US university if it mandated vaccine passports
More than half of respondents to a survey of prospective international students stated that they would be more likely to apply to a university if it introduced mandatory Covid-19 vaccine passports
Seeta Bhardwa
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Prospective international students considering studying in the US would be more likely to apply to a university if it mandated Covid-19 passports to attend, research by THE Student has found.
In a survey of 440 prospective international students conducted by the THE consultancy team, 44 per cent of respondents stated that they would be much more likely to attend and 15 per cent said they would be somewhat more likely to attend a university if it mandated Covid-19 passports.
Just 11 per cent of the respondents stated that they would be less likely to attend a university if it made vaccine passports mandatory.
The survey was conducted to coincide with the release of the launch Wall Street Journal/THE College Rankings 2022.
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A large number of universities across the US have already mandated vaccine passports for students wishing to return to campus, including Princeton University.
Nearly all the respondents (95 per cent) said that they were either vaccinated or would accept a vaccine if they were offered one.
On other Covid-19 related measures, students were asked how they felt about online teaching versus in-person teaching, and how that would impact their choice of university.
Some 86 per cent of respondents stated that they would react positively if a university announced that all its teaching would be in-person while just four per cent would react negatively if all teaching would be in-person.
In relation, just 27 per cent of students said they would react positively if a university announced that all of its teaching would remain online, while 40 per cent would react negatively. Some 30 per cent of respondents remained neutral on this question.
Les than half of the respondents (42 per cent) either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement that “online learning with a university in the US would be better than studying face-to-face in my home country”.
Students were also asked about any other concerns they had when applying to university in the US. More than half (56 per cent) stated that the cost of tuition fees was the biggest concern, while the availability of scholarships/funding opportunities was the second biggest concern (41 per cent) and student safety the third (35 per cent).
The respondents to the survey were all interested in studying in the US, with some also considering other countries such as the UK and Canada.
