In my normal daily search for news on the Internet, I’ve come across a couple more articles claiming to list the most “dangerous” institutions of higher education in America.
As I’ve said before, lists like these could actually make colleges and universities less safe because they punish the schools that are working hard to encourage the accurate reporting of crime in their communities. In many cases, institutions with higher rates of reported incidents are safer than the campuses that lull potential students into a false sense of security with low crime numbers that don’t represent reality.
Because lists like these do so much damage, I’m not going to link to the articles featuring them and reward their publishers for bad behavior. That said, I want to call your attention to the article I wrote in response to a previous attempt by a different news organization to name the “25 Most Dangerous Colleges in America.” You can read it here.
Hopefully, this will remind potential students, their parents and the public in general to ignore articles that rely only on statistics and don’t take into account the realities of law enforcement, campus culture and crime data.
Instead, I encourage everyone to review another article we’ve run called Want to Attend a Safe College? 10 Questions To Ask Before You Commit when attempting to gauge a college’s level of safety and security.
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