The department hopes to correct the problem, but as a short-term fix will add a disclaimer to the site that explains such cases. It's not surprising that many college didn't have those numbers because the law did not require them to recalculate their crime statistics for 1997 and 1998 under the rules changes adopted in 1998. But some chose to do so anyway. Granted, the Web site wasn't set up specifically to allow comparisons among the years, but inevitably such judgments are made, and not just by prospective students. The Education Department must submit a report, based on the information, to Congress before the end of the year, and it may include a discussion of the levels of crime, department officials say.
Institutions also acknowledge that they make comparisons based on the numbers.
The only comparison you can make is where a college has had time to redo the 1998 data. Despite the discrepancies among the data, Ms. Moore, like other campus officials, police officers, and security experts, said a uniform Web site devoted to campus crime remains a valuable resource. She views the site's first year as a time to work out all the bugs.