These mandates face increasingly heavy criticism from medical doctors and scholars who point to concerns regarding the vaccine's safety, efficacy, and necessity.

Lucia Sinatra, co-founder of No College Mandates, an organization that tracks and advocates for the abolition of vaccine mandates, told The College Fix that such policies are "unreasonable and discriminatory."

"One can only assume the purpose of this monthly testing is to discriminate against those who choose against COVID-19 vaccination and put undue pressure on them with the hopes they will tire of both the cost and routine of the monthly testing and succumb to the coercion to take COVID-19 vaccines," Sinatra said in a recent email.

Many schools have been quietly retiring their vaccine mandates over the past year. The most recent of these include Wayne State University, which announced this month that it "strongly" recommends but no longer requires the vaccine.

San Diego State University also ended its mandate recently, according to No College Mandates. The number is down from approximately 100 colleges one year ago, according to an August 2023 report by The Fix.

However, 20 schools continue to require their students to receive the vaccine, including the Southern University System based in Louisiana and three California State University campuses, the watchdog reports.

SUS, a public university system, requires all students to receive the vaccine. Students may opt out through a letter of dissent or an exemption form but must submit a negative COVID test monthly, according to a vaccine protocol page on its website.

Professor Todd Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University and senior scholar with the Brownstone Institute, told The Fix the motivation for colleges to continue vaccine mandates "is reflexive authoritarianism."