Reporting Burden in Higher Education: The Case of the Clery Act

Members of both political parties have decried two seemingly contradictory things in higher education. They want better information to inform students, families, taxpayers, and policy makers – but they also want fewer burdens on institutions, which some say increase costs, stifle innovation, and move schools’ focus away from the primary mission of educating students. While these are both laudatory goals, they appear, at face value, to call for action in opposite, conflicting directions. Students and institutions are left with the worst of both worlds—too much data, reporting, and burden and not enough usable information.

To escape this seeming contradiction between reporting burden and access to information, public discourse and debate should shift away from talking about burden in the generic, abstract sense to the specific ways in which it affects institutions and policy makers. So, let’s look at one of the most heavily cited sources of burden: consumer disclosures. In a 2013 GAO report, this category, which includes campus safety and security reports, was the most frequently cited as burdensome in interviews of experts and higher education officials.

The campus safety component of these disclosures stems from the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, first passed in 1990 as the Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act. The law requires colleges to annually report campus security statistics, maintain a public log of recent crime, and provide timely warnings of ongoing threats to students.

The provision grew out of campus safety advocacy efforts led by Connie and Howard Clery, who founded Security On Campus, Inc. (now the Clery Center for Security on Campus) after the brutal and shocking 1986 rape and murder of their daughter Jeanne in her freshman dorm at Lehigh University. The subsequent investigation revealed lapses in security oversight by the university. Her murderer, Josoph M. Henry, a fellow student she did not know, was able to gain access to her dorm by passing through three automatically locking doors that had been propped open with boxes for convenience. The Clerys also discovered that there had been 38 violent crimes on campus over the prior three years, but no laws at the time required the university to report them to students or prospective students.

After the passage of multiple state laws, the 1990 federal bill was introduced in Congress by Representative William Goodling (R-PA) in response to the Clerys’ advocacy efforts. In introducing the bill, Goodling testified: “This resolution will ensure the Department of Education gives priority status to this important responsibility [of protecting students].... Colleges are trying to hide [crime incidents] because they're in a very competitive business. There's no question they are putting students in danger if they try to cover up the crime that's going on in order to recruit students." In 1998, Senator Arlen Specter (then R-PA) sponsored legislation tightening the reporting requirements and officially renaming it after Jeanne Clery. At the time of the bill’s passage, Specter spoke at a conference with the Clerys in which he emphasized the importance of campus safety and the lives that would be saved by the bill.

The evidence on whether the act has actually led to a decrease in campus crime in the decades since its passage is mixed. There were no reliable figures before the legislation, and the crime rate fell broadly across the U.S. over the same time period. And although a significant percentage of senior safety and security officials in one study said the law helped bring about improvements to their policies and procedures, most did not see the law as being specifically related to a decrease in crimes in and around campus. More importantly, it does not seem like students and perspective students are actually using the specific reports and information the law requires. Previous studies and surveys show that the majority of students were not aware of the law and had not read the annual report that it requires, and only 10 percent of students said that they had factored campus crime statistics into their choice of school.

But colleges and universities that don’t meet the law’s stringent disclosure requirements do face significant penalties for violating the act. Each violation is punishable by a fine up to $35,000 per violation and possible loss of Title IV eligibility for the institution. In 1998, Eastern Michigan University was fined $350,000, at that point the largest-ever penalty for violating the law, for failing to quickly and accurately issue warnings after the murder of a student Laura Dickinson in her dorm room. Other institutions, including USC, have been accused of reporting incidents inaccurately to lower the overall numbers of violent crimes appearing in the log and reports mandated by Congress.

The Clery Act was a strong response by lawmakers to a personal and shocking tragedy. Support for the bill was overwhelming – it passed the House without objection, and the Senate on a voice vote. The law is not likely to disappear anytime soon – in fact, members have Congress have only piled on more and more requirements to the law. For example, the 1998 reauthorization required institutions to report off-campus crimes that occurred in close proximity to the institution. This led to concern from some institutions on where exactly to draw the line of “close proximity,” given that any tragic event near campus but outside the specified area could bring further negative attention to a school’s policies. Industry organizations also complain that the frequent changes to the law (four in 10 years following its passage) made it nearly impossible to systematically collect and accurately report the information.

Despite the burden and mixed evidence on its utility to students and their families, then, the Clery Act seems deeply entrenched as a key reporting requirement. And yet, key higher education questions for students, families, and the nation – for example, accurate graduation rates, complete student debt figures, and students’ post-education employment prospects – still can’t be answered. And yet, lawmakers have resisted asking schools to report those outcomes, hiding behind the generic guise of burden.

The difference is that campus crime advocates like the Clerys have an evocative story, a powerful movement, and personal champions on Capitol Hill behind them. That combination was enough in this case to overcome the higher education lobby’s pleas for relief from reporting burden. Meanwhile, students’ voices and their families’ interest in the unknowable information about students’ outcomes are drowned out by lobbyists. That’s why the reporting requirements under the Clery Act will be reliably maintained – and other critical questions of the value of college have been shoved to the back."