South Dakota Campus Safety

South Dakota reports Clery Act campus safety data across 21 higher education institutions distributed across 14 cities , serving approximately 50,589 enrolled students combined. The statewide average safety score stands at 1.52 on-campus incidents per 1,000 enrolled students, placing South Dakota at national rank #15 among US states for campus safety outcomes. The median institution in South Dakota reports 0.88 incidents per 1,000 students, while 8 campuses reported zero on-campus incidents during the survey window.

Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell leads South Dakota with the lowest reported incident rate (0.00 per 1,000 students). The largest institution by enrollment is South Dakota State University with 11,498 students and a safety score of 2.09. Raw incident counts across institutions in this state must be interpreted alongside enrollment size — a large urban research university and a small rural liberal arts college produce very different absolute numbers for identical underlying risk.

Every institution listed below participates in federal financial aid programs and is therefore legally required under the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act to publish annual on-campus crime statistics. The data is collected by the US Department of Education via the OPE Campus Safety and Security Survey. Rankings shown on this page reflect incident rates per 1,000 enrolled students, so smaller schools with a handful of reports can score worse than large universities with dozens of reports. Use the table below to compare campuses with similar enrollment profiles before drawing conclusions about relative safety.