The U.S. still has roughly 4,000 degree-granting postsecondary institutions, but the number has been shrinking for nearly a decade. Colleges acknowledge historically low birthrates — lower even than during the Great Depression — mean increasingly stiff competition for fewer students.

On the student side of the equation, academic advisors counsel their advisees to make their college decisions by figuring out "what's important to them" and selecting schools that "align with those priorities."

As it happens, COVID has confronted would-be college students who are trying to separate the wheat from the chaff with a new and pressing question: Does the college of their choice side with health freedom — or has it chosen to ignore the Nuremberg principle of informed consent by recklessly mandating experimental COVID shots?

Lawyers caution "universities should tread carefully and consult legal counsel … before making this critical policy decision," arguing COVID vaccine mandates could invite a "wave of litigation."

Ignoring this advice, more than 500 colleges and universities so far have decided to impose vaccine mandates for fall 2021.

Institutions of higher education in vaccine-coercive states like California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York — states that in recent years eliminated or threatened to eliminate vaccine exemptions — are among the COVID vaccine mandate ringleaders.