Burglary is a Clery Act reportable offense category - unlawful entry into a structure to commit a crime.. Across the 3-year reporting window from 2022 to 2024, US colleges and universities cumulatively reported 21,104 burglary incidents on-campus. The most recent year on record (2024) shows 6,673 incidents, reported by 1,252 of the 5,585 institutions in the survey, an average of 5.33 among the institutions that reported any. Year-over-year, burglary reporting fell by 3.7% - a signal that should be read alongside reporting-practice changes, not only real-world incidence.
Federal campus-safety record
Burglary on campus
National reporting patterns for burglary across 5,585 U.S. colleges and universities.
Offense plate
Sheet CRIME-BURGLARY · Burglary 2024 · 1,252 reporters
TIER-COMMON · SIL-LOW · TRD-DECL · GEO-BROAD · GRP-CRIM · INC-TOT · YR-2024 · SRC-OPE
- TIER-COMMON Broad footprint
- SIL-LOW 77.6% zero
- TRD-DECL Declining
- GEO-BROAD 50+ states
- GRP-CRIM #2 in group
- INC-TOT 6,673
- YR-2024 2024
- SRC-OPE OPE Clery
Offense plate for Burglary: reporting tier, zero-reporting share, trend shape, geographic breadth, and Clery group rank. Every stamp is derived from this offence's federal extract, not portal boilerplate.
University of Houston burglary count #1 of 1,252 is not Reed College rate #1 of 1,098
University of Houston ranks #1 of 1,252 on raw burglary counts (106 incidents) but Reed College ranks #1 of 1,098 on incidents per 1,000 enrolled (12.52, 17 incidents, 1,358 students). University of Houston is rate #96 in that 1,000+ student pool. The campus with the most filed reports is not the highest rate. Clery Act on-campus filings, 2024. Filed reports, not a personal risk forecast.
Data source U.S. Department of Education, OPE Campus Safety and Security Survey
- University of Houston incidents
- 106
- Reed College per 1,000
- 12.52
- 2024 national total
- 6,673
- Campuses reporting ≥1
- 1,252
Burglary count #1 vs rate #1 (2024)
Incidents per 1,000 enrolled students at the raw-count leader and the rate leader. Rate pool is campuses with at least 1,000 students.
- OR
Reed College (OR)
12.52 per 1,000 students
- TX 2.21
University of Houston (TX)
2.21 per 1,000 students
What this shows University of Houston ranks #1 of 1,252 on raw burglary counts (106 incidents) but Reed College ranks #1 of 1,098 on incidents per 1,000 enrolled (12.52, 17 incidents, 1,358 students). University of Houston is rate #96 in that 1,000+ student pool. The campus with the most filed reports is not the highest rate.
Which campuses filed burglary reports (2024)
Of 5,585 Clery-surveyed institutions, how many recorded at least one on-campus burglary incident versus zero.
- ≥1 filed 1,252
Campuses reporting at least one burglary incident
1,252 campuses
- Zero
Campuses reporting zero burglary incidents
4,333 campuses
What this shows 1,252 of 5,585 surveyed campuses (22.4%) filed at least one burglary incident in 2024; 4,333 (77.6%) reported none. A zero is the ordinary case for this offence, not evidence that a campus is safer than one that filed.
Burglary briefing
What the burglary national total does, and does not, show
The peak year for burglary reporting was 2022 with 7,502 incidents. An average of 1,316 institutions recorded at least one such incident each year across the reporting window. The single institution with the most reported burglary incidents in 2024 is University of Houston in Houston, TX with 106 incidents (2% of the national total). 4,333 of the 5,585 surveyed institutions (77.6%) recorded no burglary at all in 2024, so a zero is the ordinary case for this offence rather than a distinguishing result. That still leaves this among the more widely reported offences on the survey: a reporting campus is common enough that a zero says less about the campus than about how consistently it identifies and records burglary.
Within criminal offenses reported in 2024, burglary is the 2nd most-reported of 11 offences, at 20.1% of the group's 33,224 incidents. Reporting is widely distributed: the single highest-reporting institution accounts for 2% of the 2024 national total, so no one campus drives this figure. No campus accounts for more than 2% of the 2024 total, so the order below tracks institution size as much as anything else: these are raw incident counts, not per-student rates, and a large university can lead the table without being less safe than a small one.
Institutions in 55 states and territories recorded at least one burglary incident in 2024, and no single state dominates it, the largest being CA at 16.5%, so this is a genuinely national picture rather than a few jurisdictions standing in for one. Every figure here counts on-campus incidents; noncampus buildings and adjacent public property are reported under separate Clery Act geographic categories.
A steady decline across the window
Every year in this window moved the same way. Reported burglary incidents went from 7,502 to 6,673, down 11% overall, with no year reversing the direction.
The same 5,585 institutions were surveyed in each year, so the direction is not an effect of the survey changing size. Institutions reporting at least one incident went from 1,359 to 1,252, and the average among them from 5.5 to 5.3.
Burglary reporting window
Burglary year-by-year trend
| Year | Total Incidents | Schools Reporting ≥1 | Surveyed | Avg Among Reporters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 7,502 | 1,359 | 5,585 | 5.52 |
| 2023 | 6,929 | 1,337 | 5,585 | 5.18 |
| 2024 | 6,673 | 1,252 | 5,585 | 5.33 |
Source: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education Clery Act Campus Safety Survey · 2024 National trend for Burglary. Counts cover on-campus incidents; 1,252 of 5,585 surveyed institutions reported at least one in 2024.
Burglary: campuses with the most reports (2024)
A long tail, not a three-campus story
The first three rows contribute only 4.2% of reported burglary incidents. Even all 20 campuses shown here account for 17.1%, leaving most of the national total outside this table. Use these rows as examples from a broad reporting footprint, not as institutions that explain the national pattern. The leading trio are University of Houston, Columbia University in the City of New York and Indiana University-Indianapolis.
The long tail contains 6,394 incidents across 1,249 other reporting campuses. That base, rather than the podium, carries the national figure.
Ranked by raw count this list favours large campuses. Re-ranked by incidents per 1,000 students across institutions of 1,000+ students, the highest rate for burglary in 2024 is Reed College (OR) at 12.52 per 1,000 students (17 incidents, 1,358 students), not University of Houston, which leads on raw count.