A recent Los Angeles Times post announced that UC and Cal State Systems are among the first state university systems to implement plans to require COVID-19 vaccines for students who want to take classes in person this fall. How will universities keep track of student inoculations? At BP Logix, we have developed an application for university vaccine tracking, in anticipation of what is proving to be a trend in higher ed nationwide. You can sign up to get a 14 Day demo of our Vaccine Tracker here.
Rutgers and Cornell were the first to announce the requirement weeks ago. Brown in Rhode Island, Northeastern in Boston, Nova Southeastern University in Florida, and Fort Lewis College in Colorado have announced they plan to require vaccines this fall as well. Add the UC and Cal systems and it's clear that the dominos are falling.
Though there could be some legal issues with making vaccination a requirement for university attendance, a USA Today post reported that most parents seemed likely to be in favor of required vaccinations if the condition would allow the return of the traditional college experience. That sentiment was shared by students at Boston University, which just released their plan to require vaccination.
Private universities, which normally have more autonomy over student choices, and which, in some cases already required some types of vaccinations before the pandemic, are more likely to be able to adopt the requirement without legal challenges.
An expert in both university life and law offered the following perspective in the above-cited USA Today article.
Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, a professor at the University of California, Hastings College of Law who studies vaccine law, said, "even before the pandemic it was normal to see variation in universities' vaccine requirements. More universities may also make decisions after they see their peers act."
If many universities adopt mandatory vaccinations as predicted, a vaccine tracker will need to be readily available.
Current conditions make it seem the pressure is on universities to require students to get vaccinated. Although vaccinations will lessen worries about spreading the virus, the new challenge of implementing a vaccine tracker will arise.
How can universities keep track of student vaccinations? How difficult is it to set up vaccine tracking programs or applications? In response to inquiries by our Higher Ed customers, BP Logix is debuting a Vaccine Verification Application that is now available for purchase.
Our experience with our higher ed customers gives us great insight into which processes within higher education have the greatest demand for automation. Our library of higher education Apps has been built based on our highest used and requested processes from our customers. This background was instrumental in our development of the university vaccine tracking application for higher education which is available today.
Learn how higher ed is using process automation to transform and scale. Check out BP Logix low-code platform for higher education at the link here.