One of the country’s best universities, Stanford University, also has the highest crime rate among California's largest schools, according to data from the federal Department of Education.
Stanford topped the list for schools with more than 10,000 students, followed by the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles, according to a southern California lawyer, George Gedulin, who calculated the rankings.
Among schools with more than 1,000 students, Claremont McKenna College headed the list, followed by Pomona College and Occidental College. Claremont McKenna and Pomona, both part of the Claremont Colleges consortium, are east of Los Angeles, while Occidental is in Los Angeles.
And among the smallest schools, Providence Christian College in Pasadena was number one, followed by Shasta Bible College and Graduate School in Redding and American Baptist Seminary of the West in Berkeley.
Fifty-three percent of the crimes were burglaries, 18 percent were sex crimes and 17 percent the theft of cars and other motor vehicles.
The data, which covered the years 2012 to 2014, was posted with this caution: Some schools underreported campus crimes, others made mistakes and some crimes were never reported. Also the statistics are for alleged offenses before prosecutions.
Gedulin asked Providence Christian College why its rate was so much higher than any other school’s. The college responded that it shared a campus with other groups and reported all crimes, whether they involved their students.
