In an Inside Higher Ed story entitled “Final Changes to Clery Act” (really — the Education Department bureaucrats won’t ever think of more stuff to mandate?) we read that colleges and universities will now be required to collect and disclose statistics on the number of crime allegations that were investigated, but determined to be unfounded. More obligatory paperwork (unless, of course, the school would rather say “no” to federal money, which is the Department’s leverage), but what good will it do? Are prospective students interested in knowing which campuses have more unfounded allegations of crime than others?

As I argued in this piece on the Clery Act, the assumption it is based on, that mandating the disclosure of crime statistics is important in the decision-making of students and would-be employees, is extremely dubious. Unfortunately, almost no politician has the guts to say that this law just creates busy work that drives up costs, and hardly any schools are willing to go “cold turkey” and get off the addiction to federal money.