Ensuring the safety of higher education students, faculty, and staff is a multifaceted challenge that requires institutions of higher education (IHEs) to navigate myriad threats, hazards, and risks. The authors of this report identify trends in campus crime and violence, provide a historical and current look at safety and security practices at IHEs, and discuss contemporary challenges institutions face in the area of safety and security.

Safety and Security at Institutions of Higher Education

Understanding Trends, Practices, and Future Needs

Pauline Moore, Melissa Kay Diliberti, Isaiah Simmons, Heather L. Schwartz, Brian A. Jackson

ResearchPublished May 20, 2025

Ensuring the safety of students, faculty, and staff is a multifaceted challenge that requires institutions of higher education (IHEs) to navigate myriad threats, hazards, and risks. Concerns about safety and security at IHE campuses encompass everything from various forms of violence to the safety of pedestrian traffic, to the security of personal and institutional property. The strategies that IHEs rely on to help prevent crime and violence, protect their communities and buildings, and respond to violence are far from uniform. However, there is relatively little comprehensive information about the ways IHEs are addressing the variety of threats and risks they face and little guidance about how they can best work within their communities and in collaboration with outside partners.

In this report, the authors seek to shed light on trends in crime and violence at IHE campuses across the United States and what institutions are doing to ensure the safety and security of their communities. The authors develop a set of actionable recommendations for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—on its own or in partnership with other federal government agencies—to provide additional support to IHEs in the broad area of safety and security. The authors highlight current practices in the areas of violence prevention, physical security, response, and emergency preparedness and discuss the various stakeholders IHEs work with, both within and outside their immediate communities, to address safety needs.

Key Findings

  • The increasing prevalence of mental health issues among students and heightened sensitivities to gun violence among postsecondary students who have experienced school shootings, as well as the complexities involved in managing campus protests, are especially pressing emerging concerns across IHEs in the United States.
  • The IHEs represented in the sample largely rely on a collaborative approach to keeping their campus communities safe. Effective campus safety and security efforts involve collaboration among multiple institutional stakeholders, community-level partners, and federal agencies.
  • Physical security measures, including the use of security personnel, are key to keeping campuses safe. IHEs also rely heavily on security personnel to promote safety and protect their campuses. Community policing seems to be especially important when it comes to fostering positive relationships between campus law enforcement and the broader campus community, although perceptions of campus police vary across student populations.
  • Although IHEs are making considerable efforts to keep their communities safe, resource constraints, including limited funding and staff time, pose important challenges to maintaining and improving safety and security strategies.
  • IHE campuses across the United States are often a microcosm of broader societal issues, which can complicate the work of campus safety personnel.
  • Future research related to safety and security at IHEs is needed. In particular, more up-to-date data are needed in several areas, including about postsecondary students’ perceptions of threats, trends in reporting safety-related concerns, and the shifting nature of the challenges that IHEs are facing.

Recommendations

  • Create a centralized clearinghouse of safety and security federal grant opportunities specifically for IHEs. Identified grants could promote opportunities for IHEs to make improvements to safety and security infrastructure, including physical security measures, and mental health services for college-age populations.
  • Further facilitate information-sharing and collaboration among IHEs, local law enforcement, and state and federal agencies. This could include publishing resources that highlight best practices in dealing with various types of threats and opportunities to conduct joint training exercises or host a library of tabletop exercises accessible to IHE administrators, campus safety and security personnel (including campus law enforcement agencies), and local law enforcement partners.
  • Further encourage mutual aid agreements on safety and security. DHS can be an important leader in fostering and supporting the development of mutual aid agreements among IHEs and between IHEs and local emergency responders to ensure coordinated responses during large events and emergencies.
  • Provide guidance to help IHEs develop user-friendly and accessible reporting systems for their campus communities and improve reporting outreach.
  • Provide additional resources and guidance to help IHEs address the threat of targeted violence on college campuses. Addressing targeted violence, including gun violence, on IHE campuses requires measures that support prevention, mitigation, response, and recovery.
  • Given the heightened sensitivities to gun violence with which many postsecondary students are coming to college, DHS could consider expanding guidance to IHEs on how to adequately consider and respond to the potential psychological impacts of measures designed to improve response to targeted violence.

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Moore, Pauline, Melissa Kay Diliberti, Isaiah Simmons, Heather L. Schwartz, and Brian A. Jackson, Safety and Security at Institutions of Higher Education: Understanding Trends, Practices, and Future Needs. Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center operated by the RAND Corporation, 2025. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2999-1.html.
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This research was sponsored by DHS’s S&T Directorate and conducted within the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program of the RAND Homeland Security Research Division.

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