The 10 Safest Colleges In The Country: StateUniversity.com

This week, the University of Southern California announced new safety measures, including a campus lock down at night. The new policies are a reaction to a shooting from Halloween 2012, and attempts to combat the concern about Los Angeles being one of the most dangerous college cities in the U.S.

Often times large public universities top the list of schools with the most crime, but even smaller prestigious universities are not immune from the dangers of the towns their ivory towers call home.

So which campuses are the safest? StateUniversity.com has compiled a list of the ones with the highest safety rating.

Check out the top 10 in the slideshow below:

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• 1. Arkansas State University-Beebe

  Safety rating: 100

• 2. Sheridan College

  Safety rating: 99.98

• 3. Lake Land College

  Safety rating: 99.66

• 4. Southern University at New Orleans

  Safety rating: 99.65

• 5. Erskine College and Seminary

  Safety rating: 99.21

• 6. Central Texas College

  Safety rating: 99.08

• 7. South Plains College

  Safety rating: 98.98

• 8. Virginia Western Community College

  Safety rating: 98.94

• 9. Northeast State Community College

  Safety rating: 98.92

• 10. Delgado Community College

  Safety rating: 98.91

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Comments

[MrUnlimited]

10:52 PM on 01/26/2013

The average crime rate on college campuses is low. College environments are already so safe (relative to the rest of society) that being in the top 10 of safe schools isn't really saying much. This is like trying to rank the most luxurious cars out of a pool of car brands that only include Audi, Porsche, Mercedes, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Lexus, and BMW. You'll look like a high roller regardless of which car you choose...and you'll be safe almost regardless of which college you choose (yes there are exceptions, but my point stands in general).

[anotherexpat]

01:52 PM on 01/23/2013

Pfft. Not too hard for Erskine to be safe when it's circling the drain and a bunch of fundamentalist preachers are ready to attack anything interesting that happens on their blogs.

[Thomas Minot]

03:28 PM on 01/21/2013

"The 10 Safest Colleges". Shhhhhh!!!!!

[religion free]

03:20 PM on 01/21/2013

safest is Phoenix online school

[sturat]

03:22 PM on 01/22/2013

depends upon where you live.

[religion free]

03:37 PM on 01/22/2013

ahhhh therein lies the rub

[HelloooCanada]

03:12 PM on 01/23/2013

they said safest SCHOOLS, though.

[religion free]

03:15 PM on 01/23/2013

got me there.

[Sonupv]

03:19 PM on 01/21/2013

Where there are great universities,there are more jobs and bigger populations and the chance of crimes in such areas is going to be naturally higher than the boonies. If you are choosing college based on crime statistics of that BIG city and not on the quality of eduction you will get then you either are lying ( and can't get into a good university ) or you are just out of your mind and college probably won't help you much.

[Elsinor]

04:35 PM on 01/21/2013

Of the US News top five ranked colleges (Harvard, Columbia, University of Chicago, Princeton, and Yale) all but one (Princeton) is in a major city or highly-urbanized setting (i.e., Yale and New Haven). The same is generally true of the rest of the top ten.

In my personal experience, the danger of these campuses is highly overrated as the immediate neighborhoods are pretty safe actually. Yes, there may be dicier neighborhoods nearby, but this is just the nature of densely populated major cities. Plus, living in a world-class city can be an education in and of itself if you have never done so.

[MathIsTruth]

03:12 PM on 01/21/2013

There is no greater risk in choosing a college than the possibility of choosing one where you won't get a good education.
If your goal is to stay alive and healthy for four years, stay at home.

[OneBurbon]

02:58 PM on 01/21/2013

places with a lot of white people

[joekiggy]

03:04 PM on 01/21/2013

Those particular community colleges (and community colleges in general) are full of non-whites. Same with state universities to a certain extent.

[Bogey907]

03:14 PM on 01/21/2013

My state alma mater has non-whites. They're called "the football team" and "the basketball team".

[bahkey]

03:52 PM on 01/21/2013

Some White male american will likely show up and gun down 20 or more people.

[ivsciguy]

02:38 PM on 01/21/2013

My school was pretty safe for a couple hundred years with the worst thing being a fist fight now and then. Then during my Sophomore year this foreign student took a building hostage with a partially assembled bomb because his grades were bad and he was getting deported. When he realized his bomb wasn't complete he started running around throwing powdered sugar at everyone while screaming about anthrax. Then two years after I graduated a guy decided he was going to break in to a nearby military base, but ran away after after taking a couple pot shots at the gate guards. He then had a high speed chase with police, state troopers, and MPs that ended in him crashing into a tree on the campus and then firing an assault rifle at his pursuers and then somehow escaping by running through the geology building. He was found the next day shortly after car-jacking someone.

[biggy ww]

02:15 PM on 01/21/2013

If you're choosing a school based on "safety", then you're a fool, or you're letting your helicopter parents choose it for you. Either way, you shouldn't go there.

[GoldenGateCA]

02:11 PM on 01/21/2013

These lists are meaningless without some analysis. Looks like some are community colleges. Most community colleges have no dorms and no one living on campus. That would tend to cut down on crime quite a bit. In fact any school with no dorms would probably do well, community college or not. I take night classes at a community college and the young women walk out to their cars without hesitation at 9:00pm. This was VERY different at the Big Ten University I went to years ago.

[Y Woodman Brown]

01:56 PM on 01/21/2013

Oh, I see. This is your definition of 'safe'...whether or not the school infringes on freedom with lock-downs, roving police with Bushwhacker semi-automatics, hippy sniffing dogs and extra men posted by the mental health facilities.

As opposed to 'safe' meaning one isn't auto-kicked-out for failing to pre-pay tuition, putting off fees until next month or demonstrating against night lock-downs. Safe like flexible grading, openness to make-up exams and no F's without a year's incomplete and counseling. Or safe like in-dorm computer hook-up to library resources, ready access to tutors, availability of lecture notes and an professors' open-door fiduciary policy.

Yeah, well, so...actually, 'safest' in these 'freedom infringement' terms--really, the top ten safest institutions of higher learning are:

1. Folsom State
2. Louisiana State
3. Southern Michigan
4. Mississippi State
5. Pelican Bay
6. San Quentin State
7. Statesville Joliet
8. Attica Correctional
9. Sing Sing
and the Florence SuperMax

My understanding is, not only are these institutions the absolute lock-down safest, but also provide a variety of on-campus, affiliate program and online college course work and university degrees, including professional legal certifications to qualified students.

[uJellyFish]

02:03 PM on 01/21/2013

WTF does one's failure to pay their bills, have to do with physical safety? Oh, nothing. Gotcha.

What does a bunch of rabble-rousing wanna-be activists, hiding their desire for campus parties under the guise of 'political consciousness' have to do with physical safety? Oh, it produces an unsafe environment during a time where crowds should not be gathered in a location in the first place, requiring police babysitting and possible action. Fail still, bro.

As for Computer hookups, tutors, yadda...-NONE- of these things have to do with physical safety.

So, no matter what idiotic point you think you're trying to make, you're failing. You're conflating resources to safety and they are not comperable. Go away.

[Y Woodman Brown]

06:11 PM on 01/21/2013

I"m making the point that 'lock-down' does not equal 'safe'.
Or, if you insist that it does, then no place will be 'safe' until that 'lock-down' is implemented to the point of being a prison.
Locking ourselves in, as a method of 'safety', is really just volunteering to be imprisoned.  Being 'safe' does not have to involve infringements upon freedom.  Being frightened, allowing oneself to be bullied, into shutting oneself off is no proper method of being 'safe'.
Instead of being called the 'safest schools', this list might just as well have been called the 'most frightened schools' in America...or, the schools that have most imprisoned themselves, or those which have sacrificed the most freedom.

[ligligl]

09:35 PM on 01/22/2013

You would be suirprised by how many are killerd on these 'campuses'.

[Y Woodman Brown]

10:34 AM on 01/23/2013

No, I wouldn't.
There are 3 for every 10,000 people.  Everywhere, all across the land.  In every town, school and football stadium.
There are always 3 of 10,000 with the potential to start shooting if...
It is that 'if' which is the issue.  Not the number.  We are not treating the 'if', we are treating the number--with fear, lock-down, self-imprisonment, metal-detectors, full-body searches, shooting lessons for teachers and janitors...
There has always been 3 in 10,000 who only need a trigger to go off, who only need a small series of bad luck, signal from God, or tragic loss to have that full-metal melt-down.  We used to simply live with this continuous and omnipresent risk.  Now, due strictly to CNN-like 24/7 dedicated media coverage to each and every God-awful shooting, we've gone self-aware.
Just like the machine in the Terminator, this sudden or acute awareness has overwhelmed us and we are on the attack.  Having no target however, our attack is defensive and therefore aimed at our civil selves.  We are defense-attacking our civility, our society and citizens.
Quite simply, if the money spent by schools on these defenses were instead invested in a mental health network which identifies these 3 potential deadly people, this would dramatically reduces these incidents...not to mention cutting-out the media coverage and thus eliminating the allure of going-out in a blaze of glory.  But, instead of boldly treating the problem, we are instead locking-down our freedom.

[uJellyFish]

01:45 PM on 01/21/2013

Love the rage denial posts...

Seems to me that some people have identified that almost all of these campuses are anti-gun and still the safest in the US...so of course, degrade the college in some way before anyone else recognizes this!

[chemguy]

01:39 PM on 01/21/2013

Big name colleges attract crime, that's just reality. Iphones and laptops are easy targets for muggers and party kids are obvious customers for drug dealers.

[dwill123]

01:19 PM on 01/21/2013

West Point???

[Floyd MacGillicutty]

01:17 PM on 01/21/2013

Ah, the juggernauts of higher learning institutions.