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A new campus climate survey of 10 U.S. universities, called the Higher Education Sexual Misconduct and Awareness survey, marked declines in sexual violence across all demographics. But experts are skeptical that those numbers indicate true improvements; they argue that the limited scope of the study underscores the need for standardized, national data.
While a significant number of states have laws requiring colleges and universities to conduct climate surveys—institutionwide research into the prevalence and perceptions of sexual assault and harassment on campus—there was no federal mandate for such surveys until recently. Other organizations stepped in to try to fill the gap; in 2015 and 2019, for instance, the Association of American Universities administered the survey that became the HESMA on about 30 campuses.
In 2022, the federal government’s omnibus spending bill changed things. A provision in the bill required all U.S. campuses to complete a campus climate survey by March of this year. It also tasked the Department of Education with developing a new online survey portal that campuses could use to complete biannual campus climate surveys, allocating $1 million to the project.
With the government on the case, the AAU decided to stop administering its study. But two years later, little progress has been reported on the survey development; the ED did not respond to a request for comment.
“AAU has offered the Department technical assistance as they develop their survey; however, the Department has been delayed in fulfilling the Congressional requirement perhaps because of a lack of funding,” Win Boerckel, an AAU spokesperson, told Inside Higher Ed by email. He added that the ED has not reached out to take the organization up on their offer.
Without national data, it’s difficult to assess whether the reported declines are a widespread phenomenon. The 10 institutions that sponsored and participated in the 2024 HESMA study—which was performed by the same company, Westat, and used essentially the same methodology as the previous iterations of the AAU survey—were largely highly selective, private universities located near the coasts, and not necessarily representative of U.S. higher education as a whole.
The lack of data is especially significant regarding campus sexual assault. According to various studies, the rate at which women are sexually assaulted on campus has barely shifted since the 1970s, when it was first reported that one in five women faces sexual violence in college. (The percentage of women who said in the HESMA study that they had experienced sexual assault at some point in college—21.6 percent—still exceeded that statistic, despite the decline from 2019.)
S. Daniel Carter, the president of Safety Advisors for Educational (SAFE) Campuses, a consultancy focused on safety in higher education, said the data shows that few, if any, of the multitudinous efforts colleges have undertaken to try to reduce sexual violence on campus have been effective.
“You cannot adequately tackle a challenge until you know exactly what it looks like. Without hard data, you can’t know how to effectively target and respond to problems,” he said.
Like the AAU, Carter posited that funding is probably the reason the ED’s online climate survey has not yet been completed.
“The million dollars appropriated was at best a down payment on a project of that scope. There needs to be more money for a project of that magnitude,” he said. He noted that in the 2024 Westat study, every participant was compensated—a massive investment in itself.
David Cantor, a co-principal investigator on the HESMA study and both of AAU’s studies, said that getting students to answer is one of the greatest challenges of conducting a campus climate survey.
“When you send people emails these days, they don’t necessarily pay attention,” he said.
Explanations for Declines
Most of the participating universities sent press releases applauding the declines in nonconsensual sexual contact, while acknowledging that rates of sexual violence on their campuses were still unacceptably high.
“We are deeply disturbed by the fact that high rates of sexual misconduct continue. Even one instance is too many. Sexual harassment and violence cross all lines of identity, ability, and background and disproportionately affect the marginalized and vulnerable among us,” the University of Pennsylvania’s interim president, J. Larry Jameson, and provost, John L. Jackson Jr., wrote in a statement to campus about the results.
The 2024 study itself notes that there could be explanations for the declines that don’t necessarily mean the climate on campus has improved. For example, the decline in the share of students who have experienced sexual violence during their entire college experience might be because few students were on campuses during the first semesters of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, rates of sexual violence in 2023–24, after students returned to in-person classes, also decreased as compared to 2018–19.
Tracey Vitchers, executive director of It’s On Us, an advocacy and research organization focused on campus sexual violence, said she was “skeptical” of the HESMA results and that it would be “disingenuous” for universities to celebrate the report as a win.
She said she feared that the declines might stem in part from students’ decreased understanding of what constitutes sexual assault and harassment; according to the survey, the percentage of students who said they know their university’s definition of those terms dropped for men, women and gender-nonconforming students from 2019 to 2024.
“That begs the question, are students experiencing sexual violence but are not educated enough to label it as such as a result of poor-quality prevention and awareness programs during the pandemic?” she said. “Anecdotally, we know the pandemic led many institutions to transition to online learning modules,” which research has found are less effective than in-person trainings.
Vitchers said she is eager for the ED to release further guidance on how institutions should collect their own campus climate data.
“At some point we will have, hopefully, better data, and data from a larger sample,” she said.