Student Safety: The Most Dangerous Colleges in Michigan

When we send our children off to college or attend ourselves, it can be terrifying for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately, one of the most prominent is how dangerous college campuses and towns can be.

The issues aren't confined to a few places, either. Many colleges across the country have begun to build a reputation for being anywhere from mildly dangerous to a downright nightmare.

Degree Choices conducted a study to see which colleges are the most dangerous, and two Michigan schools made the list of 45.

Get our free mobile app

Eastern Michigan held the lower ranking of the two Michigan schools on the list, landing at No. 24. In 2022, EMU reported 38 total violent crimes on campus.

The University of Michigan was the other school on the list, though ranking much higher at No. 5 overall. UofM reported 78 total violent crimes on campus in 2022.

For what it's worth, Ohio State University topped this list with 111 violent crimes reported in 2022.

It's worth noting, the study includes two lists of dangerous schools, one that tallies the total number of violent crimes in 2022 and another that accounts for campus size.

Understandably, bigger schools and larger student bodies are more prone to these unfortunate circumstances. Michigan is one of the largest schools in the country and EMU being squeezed in between Ann Arbor and Detroit doesn't excuse the high number of violent crimes, but does help explain why they are more likely to happen.

As it stands though, on average, neither school is particularly problematic when factoring in their size.

In Degree Choices' second list of the study which calculates the number of violent crimes per 100,000 students, neither school made the list. However, most of these schools are very, very small as the calculations resulted in thousands of crimes per 100k when the schools had considerably less crimes.

Between the data and ratios, it's difficult to determine which campuses are truly the most dangerous, especially when taking every single school into account.

However, based on the number of violent crimes alone when simply looking at Michigan colleges, the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan can justifiably be considered more dangerous than the rest. But with that in mind, the schools are far from lawless war zones of scum and villainy.