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Each time a horrifying murder happens in a college campus, the security turn out to be the target as it is at the moment, in the wake of the slaying of a University of Virginia student by her ex- boyfriend, also a student.

Parents of college students are understandably troubled with regard to the protection of their kids in their educational campuses even as school officers assure to look into the matter and enhance their security protocol.

At present, the entire attention is on the UVA, where the lawyer George Huguely representing the student blamed with first-degree execution in the death of Yeardley Love, told media that the lacrosse player's loss was an accident and that the 22-year-old Huguely, also a lacrosse player, had not aimed to kill her.

The case is attracting wide media interest, in division. Most of them strongly condemn this murder as the victim is white, rich and attractive and was murdered under odd circumstances at one of the country’s leading institutions.

So how secure are university grounds? Is it actually reasonable to assume that U.S. colleges and universities are safe, knowing that the nation has the highest murder rate among all countries?

There are a total of 17 million students attending 4,200 colleges and universities in the US and as per new government statistics on campus crime, there were 174 murders and non-casual assassination cases reported from the year 2005 to 2008, along with 46 careless cases. In the former category, there were 28 in 2005, 25 in 2006, 66 in 2007 and 55 in 2008; in the subsequent category there were 33 in 2005, none in 2006, 8 in 2007 and 5 in 2008.

All schools aren’t similar when it comes to security standards. The Department of Education has a website where you can report any school or college not providing adequate security. Schools have been asked to supply facts on definite fault under the Clery Law, named after a girl who was raped and killed at Lehigh University. However, at least 38 cruel crimes on campuses went unreported.

A significant observation is that schools have been condemned for under coverage. Anyone can obtain data from the Campus Security Data Analysis Cutting instrument.

Hardly any organizations have given great attention to campus security and maintained records. For instance, after the killing of a doctoral student at Yale University last year, the Daily Beast examined data from 4,000 schools and looked at more than 50 unrelated reasons, before judging the schools on a per head basis.

According to the Daily Beast, some of the safe colleges include the Emerson College in Boston (which had about no on-campus misdeed, but a lot outside), The University of Maryland at Baltimore, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chicago’s Saint Xavier and the Tufts University in Massachusetts.

The safest colleges in status were the New York Institute of Technology, Grand Valley State University in Michigan, Idaho State University, Farmingdale State University in New York and Indiana Wesleyan University.