It seems all of Los Angeles is up in arms over the Most Dangerous Colleges list we published last week.
This list ranked colleges by the number of crimes committed on or near campus, as reported by the FBI.
UCLA and UC-Riverside, among others on the list, complained about our using data that was not limited to on-campus crime. The FBI crime data on which we based our ranking is compiled from crime data submitted by colleges across the country. Some colleges probably are more aggressive in reporting crimes on neighboring non-campus areas. And some colleges do not participate in the survey at all.
The schools that complained, including UCLA, demanded that we rank college crime instead by data compiled through the Clery Act, which can be sorted to count only crimes that occur on campus. Although looking only at crimes that occur on campus seems like a strangely limited perspective--students do, occasionally, venture off campus--we agreed to crunch the numbers based on this report.
Based on this alternate methodology, UCLA and UC-Riverside are once again among the 25 most dangerous colleges in America.
In fact, the new list contains many of the same schools as the original.
We take this to suggest that both lists are pretty good at identifying dangerous schools.
The methodology: We looked at Clery's data for on-campus crimes from 2007-2009, the latest years for which complete data was available. Schools were ranked by violent crime per capita and by property crime per capita, counting murder/nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault for violent crimes, and burglary, motor vehicle theft, arson for property crimes. These rankings were combined with violent crime weighted four times higher to produce the final ranking. Our ranking based on the FBI data was similar, except that it looked at 2008-2011 and it also included the data on larcenies.
First, here's the original ranking based on FBI data:
Note: Although per capita data was used to determine the rankings, we are displaying actual average crime numbers for simplicity.
Now here's the ranking based on Clery on-campus crime data (Note: property crime numbers are much lower because they do not include larceny):
You'll notice plenty of similarity between the lists — which is remarkable considering that these lists involve different data, different years, and slightly different criteria.
While UCLA dropped from #1 on the FBI list to #24, the other vocal critic, UC Riverside actually moved higher from #24 to #23. Other schools appearing on both include UC Berkeley, Duke, MIT, Vanderbilt, New Mexico State University, SUNY Buffalo, North Carolina A&T.
(Meanwhile, if we were to include Clery's data on crimes on campus plus relevant noncampus areas, UCLA would rank #4 for crimes. No matter how you cut it ...)
Such similar results suggest that both lists are fairly accurate at identifying dangerous colleges. It's also worth noting that many of the same schools appeared on a similar ranking published in 2010 by the Daily Beast.
Which list is best? As the FBI and the Department of Education are both reputable data sources, and the two lists produce similar results, we believe that both are valid. At the same time both lists are imperfect for reasons discussed above, which makes it valuable to look at them together.
In conclusion, we are glad to provide a second opinion, but we also reaffirm our confidence in the original list of America's most dangerous colleges.
Now check out the most dangerous cities in America >
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