INSIDE HIGHER ED — Virginia’s Republican attorney general issued an advisory opinion Friday concluding that the state’s public universities cannot require vaccination against COVID-19 as a condition for enrollment or attendance. The advisory reverses an opinion from his Democratic predecessor that reached the opposite conclusion last year. The new opinion from Virginia attorney general Jason S. Miyares comes on the heels of a Jan. 15 executive directive from the state’s new Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, prohibiting COVID-19 vaccination requirements for state employees, including employees of public higher education institutions. In his advisory opinion, Miyares wrote that while the Virginia General Assembly has conferred general powers to the boards of visitors for public higher education institutions and granted those boards “broad discretion” to set various policies, it also passed legislation mandating vaccination against diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, rubella and mumps prior to enrollment in a four-year public institution.