re: To what extent would LSU be more prestigious if it were in a safer location?

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BR crime problems was one of the main reasons
why? I live in the city of BR and my older two are at lsu

I haven’t heard of anything happening to any of their friends.

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Bad things happen everywhere, but we try to isolate ourselves from as much of it as possible by the choices we make. The possibility of being victimized is greater if you put yourself into a situation where you can be a victim, versus not putting yourself in that position to begin with. So, at LSU, i think most all of us agree that the possibility of being a victim is greater than other places.

Also, just to address your point about you not having heard of anything happening to any of your kid's friends, I know of someone whose son was held up and robbed at gun point in a parking garage by ION Apartments.

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So, at LSU, i think most all of us agree that the possibility of being a victim is greater than other places.
is there a lot of crime on campus? I think it’s mostly in the rest of Baton Rouge. So, I am not sure if I can agree.

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, I know of someone whose son was held up and robbed at gun point in a parking garage by ION Apartments.
that is terrible, but it has been shitty over there since my brother lived in Kirby-Smith in the early 2000s, and way before then.

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I think you are making my point. The area around LSU has been terrible for decades. It was bad north of campus in the 90's, and still is. Tigerland, Burbank, Brightside were all OK back then, but not so much now. The actual campus is probably fine, safety wise, but after freshman year most don't live on campus. And, certainly, most students spend a good bit of time at Fred's, etc. Not saying someone can't go to LSU and have a perfectly safe experience, it's just a choice he made to be someplace else that is, by every factor, safer, cleaner, and just better... Kids are going to make dumb decisions that put themselves in potential danger. When he was making his decision where to go to college, part of the calculus was, if he makes bad decisions, where has the lower likelihood of those bad decisions resulting in something REALLY bad happening.

Some people don’t want to hear the truth and remain willfully ignorant about the sad state of crime in BR, the negative force it has on all of us here, neighborhoods losing value, and a horrid public education system. And the fact that LSU is a walkthrough for so much violent crime now is the straw that broke the tiger’s back for my family. My child is off to out of state university in the fall. TOPS and Honors at LSU don’t mean a thing to us anymore. Very sad. We will also be moving out of South Louisiana. I’m originally from the New Orleans area and won’t go back there either.

The disease has spread far into once good student apartment living areas. It’s too much crime decay in BR and rapidly spreading around all parts of the city.

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I think you are making my point. The area around LSU has been terrible for decades.
yes Baton Rouge has sucked for a long time but people still keep having great experiences at lsu

Most students aren’t a victim of a crime, so people keep coming.

My daughter had free rides to tons of places but she wanted to stay home. My son, not so much. But he walks his sister to class and no one is going to bother him, so I’m not worried.

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That's great, really, and I hope she does well and loves LSU as much as I (and you) do. Louisiana needs more of the high achieving kids to stay home, go to LSU, and then start their career in the state. However, I just don't see that as a priority for the people in government leadership positions who make decisions. Simple things like litter, graffiti, bad roads, etc are all tolerated (or celebrated) down here. We wear our objective failures as a badge of honor, and say it's our culture. Crawfish boils, parades and festivals are fun, but other places w/o those things have grown and excelled over the past 30 years. Look at other states that have taken a different approach and blown past us. North and South Carolina, Texas, Florida, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, etc. are literally lapping us.

Same…everyone in my class that went to UL either didn’t get into LSU or were really only going to college for the party.

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go to LSU, and then start their career in the state.

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but there are no jobs here - that is the #1 problem

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We wear our objective failures as a badge of honor, and say it's our culture

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it is - my grandma from Texas went to high school, my grandma from NOLA did not - she had to go to work bc they were dirt poor

Poor people don’t get educated and Louisiana doesn’t have jobs for the ones that do - unless you know somebody

The risk of crime may have a marginal effect on the decisions of some students to study at LSU, but the bigger problem is the lack of state investment in the university. We are hemorrhaging high-quality faculty to higher-paying universities, and we are then having a difficult time in recruiting new high-quality faculty to come to LSU for the relatively low salaries that we offer. These high-quality faculty are the very ones that draw the best high-quality students to LSU.

Moreover, the LSU administration has dropped the pretense of flagship standards for admission and has implemented policies of admitting students who do not meet those flagship standards. The elimination of test scores as a requirement is a primary culprit. LSU is driven more by increasing the size of its student body by any means necessary than by the high standards that made it the state's flagship university. The best students in Louisiana can still receive a top-notch education at LSU, particularly if they are in the Honors College and/or are able to work with good faculty mentors, but the supply of high-quality faculty mentors is diminishing because of the lure of other, higher paying faculty positions elsewhere.

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Kids that go out of state usually come from wealthy families who can afford to guide their child away from one of the worst states in the country

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Except a very large # go to Ole Miss or Alabama