Under a 1990 law known as the Clery act, schools must report statistics on certain crimes, including burglaries, to the Education Department, students and staff.
A Wall Street Journal article reports that colleges have been lying on these statistics in order to make themselves more attractive to prospective students. Harvard seems to be the only honest college, reporting 446 burlaries in 2004. Nearby Northeastern University somehow had only five burglaries. I guess Harvard is so confident in its reputation as the best school, it's the only school which doesn't need to lie and cheat. (This is a trend I've noticed in people as well--once people get to the top they can be come honest, but in order to get to the top they had to cheat.)
I've complained before that statistics released by colleges shouldn't be believed because they're not audited by independent auditors, and colleges have the same incentives to cheat as public companies, which we know not to trust--even after audit by independent account firms, scandals involving companies' financial statements keep surfacing. This article proves my assertion that colleges need to be treated more like public companies. All of their statistics need to be audited by independent auditors.
Unfortunately the WSJ article is subscribers-only. Does it give any explanation of just how the colleges manage to cheat on crime statistics? I'm presuming they've found some loophole or other means that allows them to understate the numbers without actually violating federal law.
Posted by: Peter | October 23, 2006 at 11:20 AM
In a related note, Florida is getting ready to execute Danny Rolling. He killed a bunch of college students in Gainesville back in the 90's.
I did a search on him, and came across some pretty gruesome details that I won't go into. bleah... Anyway, I remember when that was going on, and it wouldn't surprise me if his actions were the inspiration for the law.
Posted by: Kirk | October 23, 2006 at 01:04 PM
I know the area around Northeastern and if there are only five burglaries, they are doing some big time fiddling with the statistics. It may be that students living off campus (there are a lot) are not counted and the dorms are subject to a strict security regimen, but even so, five?
Posted by: Richard | October 23, 2006 at 03:55 PM
Yale University is an example of why campus crime statistics can be misleading. Its campus is not a unified entity, but instead consists of a number of quadrangles each surrounded by city streets. For the most part, campus buildings face inward to the quadrangles, with each quadrangle having only a couple of passageways providing access to the street.
It's not surprising that Yale's on-campus crime rates have been quite low, as it's easy to control access to the quadrangles. Unfortunately things aren't quite as good as they might seem. Students typically move between a number of quadrangles each day, and it's not unusual for them to be robbed or assaulted when doing so (there are some sketchy areas not far from campus). Because these attacks happen on public sidewalks or streets, however, they aren't considered "campus" crime.
Posted by: Peter | October 23, 2006 at 10:51 PM
Whe I was living in Philadelphia a number of years ago, I remember that both UPenn and Temple had real bad rates of crime against students. Temple didn't seem to get too uptight about it, after all, everybody knows it is in probably one of the worst neighborhoods around, but UPenn took great pains to hide the fact that there were regular assaults, theft, and even a few rapes. Then again, Philadelphia is a pretty crime ridden city so I am not suprised that students would be a prime target.
Posted by: | October 23, 2006 at 11:42 PM
I graduated from Northeastern ('04) and it is right next to the largest slum in MA---the back side of the University is ringed with various, incredibly dangerous housing projects.
The idea that there would be only 5 burglaries (per minute?) sounds absurd to anyone familiar with the area.
Cambridge, although not perfect, is a lot nicer than the area of Boston (the South End and Roxbury) where Northeastern is located. Those areas are 'diverse' and 'vibrant'.
Fortunately, most of the students at Northeastern are locals with a technical or occupational bent---engineering, criminology/penology and business are the most common degrees---so if you go to Northeastern, you probably know that the neighborhood is not too good.
Posted by: Chris O' | October 24, 2006 at 08:06 PM