The 2015 edition of the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings is now live on our website. It includes new rankings for National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities and Regional Colleges, as well as updated statistical profiles for each school in our Best Colleges directory.
One significant, new addition this year is that U.S. News has published campus crime statistics that most colleges are required by federal law to report yearly to the U.S. government. The source for the crime data, which can be found in the Campus Safety section of each school’s profile page, is the U.S. Department of Education’s Campus Safety and Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool.
While the crime data are not factored into the Best Colleges rankings methodology, U.S. News has published these statistics to help parents and prospective students gather more information as they evaluate schools.
The crime data cover criminal offenses and arrests on campus and in noncampus buildings or property used by students. The crime statistics for on-campus student housing facilities, a subset of the on-campus data, are broken out separately as well. The statistics cover the three most recent years of available data: 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Keep in mind that the numbers for criminal offenses reflect reports of alleged offenses to campus security and law enforcement authorities, not necessarily prosecutions or convictions for crimes. These federal crime data reports have not been independently verified and are self-reported to the federal government by the schools.
Campus safety information is not available for all schools — for example, schools that do not participate in federal financial aid programs are not required by U.S. law to report these data.
Campus safety is very important for prospective and current students, faculty, staff and all others who are part of any campus community. Experts advise prospective students and their families to do their own research to evaluate the safety of a campus as well as the surrounding area.
However, it’s not currently possible to compare the relative levels of campus safety among colleges for a number of key reasons. First, many experts believe that campus crime is significantly underreported by many colleges. In addition, comparing campus crime stats is problematic because there are too many variables, such as campus size, location (big city versus small town), number of students and campus security measures including the number of police, among others, for such comparisons to be fair or accurate.
Recently, renewed national attention to sexual assaults on campuses and how some colleges are responding to and reporting those cases has resulted in some U.S. senators introducing legislation to help address the problem. At this time, there are no comparative data or standardized information to rate schools’ handling and reporting of sexual assault cases or their campus cultures when it comes to fostering safety.
Also for first time this year, as part of our ongoing efforts to explain issues surrounding paying for college, U.S. News has published each school’s three-year federal loan default rate under the Cost and Financial Aid section of schools’ online profiles. The default rate data, which also come from the U.S. Department of Education, show the percentage of students from each school who were in default on their federal student loans at the end of the second year after starting loan repayments in 2010.
For example, the 2010 default rate is the proportion of students who were in default by Sept. 30, 2012, after starting to pay their loans in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2010. Generally speaking, default means that the student borrower had not made any payments on their federal student loans for 270 to 360 days.
The national three-year default rate in 2010 was 14.7 percent . For-profit institutions continued to have the highest average three-year rate at 21.8 percent, public institutions followed at 13 percent and the private schools’ rate was 8.2 percent.
Students and their parents can use these default data as a guide for how a school’s recent graduates have been able to handle their payments on their student loans. Of course, one main reason why students default is their inability to find a job that pays enough money to make their monthly payments. Another factor is that some students have had to take on larger amounts of debt in order to graduate due to the sharply rising costs of college, which means average loan payments are higher.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, defaulting on federal student loans can have many serious consequences, including a negative credit rating, which can affect a person’s ability to borrow money for a car or house.
As an example, the data for Yale University show that in 2010 there were 1,365 students who started repaying loans and by Sept. 30, 2012, a total of 26, or 1.9 percent of them, were in default. In 2010, the University of Massachusetts–Boston had 2,686 students starting to repay loans and by the end of September 2012, a total of 239, or 8.8 percent of them, were in default.
Like the campus safety statistics, the loan default rate data are not part of the Best Colleges rankings methodology and are presented for informational purposes only.
More from U.S. News
Frequently Asked Questions About Federal Campus Crime Statistics
Learn How to Research Campus Safety
Research, Discuss Sexual Violence on College Campuses as a Family
U.S. News Publishes College Crime Statistics, Loan Default Data originally appeared on usnews.com
