A new study released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Education on school crime and safety revealed what appears to be a troubling statistic — sexual assault reports at college campus have increased more than 50% in 10 years. 
 
 According to the DOE study, "The number of reported forcible sex crimes on campus reported increased by 52 percent, from 2,200 in 2001 to 3,300 in 2011." Put another way, there were 2.2 sexual assault reports for every 10,000 full-time students in 2011, compared with 1.9 reports per 10,000 students in 2001. 
 
 This 50% rise is roughly consistent with other studies of college sexual assault reports. 
 
 Earlier this year, NPR found that "forcible rape" reports at four-year colleges increased 49% between 2008 and 2012. Likewise, a Boston Globe investigation into federal data revealed that "forcible sex offense" reports rose by almost 40% in Boston-area colleges between 2008 and 2012. 
 
 However, as NPR notes, these are arguably positive statistics (emphasis ours): "That increase shows that sexual assault is a persistent and ugly problem on college campuses. But there's also a way to look at the rise in reports and see something positive: It means more students are willing to come forward and report this underreported crime." 
 
 Various studies have found that around one in five college females will be the victim of sexual assault during their time on campus and that around 90-95% of these sexual assaults go unreported. 
 
 "When we see sexual assault numbers increase, that hopefully means the barriers to reporting are finally beginning to be addressed, which means you are beginning the steps to solve the problem," S. Daniel Carter, director of the 32 National Campus Safety Initiative, told The Globe. 
 
 There is still a massive difference between the one in five statistic — notably cited by the White House earlier this year — and the new DOE report's 2.2 sexual assault reports per 10,000 students. It is important to note that academic and other independant studies are usually conducted using responses from anonymous college students, rather than the DOE's report, which is exclusively using data from official police reports. 
 
 It is also notable that the DOE study defines "forcible sexual offenses" as "any sexual act directed against another person forcibly and/or against that person's will." 
 
 Likely, this rise can partially be attributed to increased education on college campuses about what constitutes sexual assault — for example, date rape, sexual coercion, or other situations where one person is unable to give consent. 
 
 As Los Angeles Times columnist Sandy Brooks wrote in May, "We're not talking about strangers jumping out of bushes. The majority of campus sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim knows, and involve overuse of alcohol or drugs." 
 
 Brooks cites a National Institute of Justice study, which, as she writes, found that 14% of college women "said someone had sexual contact with them when they were passed out or too drunk to be able to stop or provide consent ... [but] only 37% of the women the study classified as rape victims believed that what happened to them was rape." ||||| The number of sex crimes reported on U.S. college campuses soared by 50% over the course of a decade, according to a new government report Tuesday, even as total campus crime decreased. 
 
 The federal Department of Education report looked at assault data up to 2011, when 3,300 forcible sex offenses were reported on campuses across the U.S. That was up from 2,200 reported sex assaults a decade earlier. University crimes in every other category decreased, said the report, which primarily focused on elementary and secondary school safety. 
 
 The increase in reported sexual assaults may not necessarily indicate an increase in assaults themselves, but rather a greater number of crimes being reported. Advocates say a marked increase in reports of sexual assault can be a sign that survivors are beginning to feel more comfortable going to authorities. 
 
 Even though the data ends at 2011, the prevalence of sexual assault, a crime that the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network says goes unreported 60% of the time, continues to be a national epidemic, particularly on college campuses. A May TIME cover story examined how even though the college town of Missoula, Mont. —nicknamed “America’s Rape Capital”—gained a particularly bad reputation for at least 80 reported rapes over the last three years, that figure wasn’t a surprising outlier but rather the norm. 
 
 The White House responded to a series of highly publicized on-campus rapes by releasing a set of guidelines in April urging universities to fight sexual assault, and to change reporting structures so that victims feel safe to come forward. 
 
 You can compare the number of incidents recorded on campuses using TIME’s interactive here. ||||| Campus Rape Reports Are Up, And Assaults Aren't The Only Reason 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Erin/Flickr Erin/Flickr 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Joe Shapiro/NPR Joe Shapiro/NPR 
 
 The number of "forcible rapes" that get reported at four-year colleges increased 49 percent between 2008 and 2012. That's the finding of an analysis by NPR's Investigative Unit of data from the Department of Education. 
 
 That increase shows that sexual assault is a persistent and ugly problem on college campuses. But there's also a way to look at the rise in reports and see something positive: It means more students are willing to come forward and report this underreported crime. 
 
 "It's a good thing that more victims are reporting because they're getting the help and support they need from their institutions," says Daniel Carter, a veteran advocate for better campus safety laws. 
 
 "For far too long, they've been left on their own. And now they're getting the help they need, which is the first step in healing and recovery and ultimately ... finishing their education as wholly as possible." 
 
 Carter is the director of a group called 32 National Campus Safety Initiative. He says there's still a long way for schools to go. 
 
 This week, the White House told colleges and universities to take more action to prevent sexual assaults. And just in the past couple of years, many schools have taken on sexual assault investigations with more seriousness. School administrations have been prodded by students who are demanding better treatment. And schools have been pushed, since 2011, by new rules and laws from Washington, D.C. 
 
 Among the schools that Carter and other advocates point to as being models is the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Melanie Maxwell/MLive.com/Landov Melanie Maxwell/MLive.com/Landov 
 
 But that school, which gives a series of training sessions to first-year students on preventing sexual assault, has had its own controversy — showing just how hard it can be for schools to take on this problem. 
 
 The University of Michigan is already doing most of the steps suggested by the White House to prevent sexual assaults on college campuses. For example, the school teaches "bystander education," which shows students how to step in and stop a dangerous situation that they see — such as a student trying to get another student drunk at a party. 
 
 Students not only are taught the definition of consent but then role-play and practice saying "No" and even how to respond correctly — and graciously — when told "No." 
 
 The data NPR analyzed show that reports of forcible sexual assaults between 2010 and 2012 have gone up 113 percent at the University of Michigan. 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Joe Shapiro/NPR Joe Shapiro/NPR 
 
 "So if you say, look, University of Michigan, we want you to be aggressive. We want you to be focused. We want you to get your students to tell you what's going on, then our numbers are going to go up," says Royster Harper, the school's vice president for student affairs. "If you want low numbers, you're really saying to students, be quiet. We should expect the more education we do, the safer our students feel, the more they see us responding. We should expect our numbers to go up." 
 
 And students have not been quiet. 
 
 In February, a small group of students protested the way the university handled sexual misconduct allegations against a player on the football team. 
 
 In 2009, a first-year student said the player, Brendan Gibbons, raped her at a fraternity party. But the case was dropped. Last August, the school adopted a new policy — based on new guidelines issued by the Department of Education in 2011 — that gave the school more leeway to conduct an investigation. A retired professor, who acts as a local watchdog, then filed a new complaint over the Gibbons investigation, and the case against the football player was reopened. 
 
 And in December, right before Michigan went to a bowl game, Gibbons was expelled. 
 
 But some students wanted to know whether the university had waited too long. 
 
 University officials refused to turn over records to an investigative committee formed by the student government. Administrators say the records had to stay confidential. 
 
 The student report concluded that the university took too long — more than 60 days — to investigate most allegations. In January, the school hired a second, full-time investigator — to look into reports of sexual assault. 
 
 "If the University of Michigan still has a ways to go, but is doing a good job relative to everyone else, everyone else really needs to do a lot to catch up," says Michael Proppe, the student government president at the time, who established the student task force. 
 
 By next fall, all schools around the country must comply with a new federal law, the Campus SaVE Act, which demands more assault prevention education and better investigations.
– There might be a reason that college sexual assaults make the news more often these days. A new Department of Education report has found that reports of "forcible" campus sexual assaults shot up 50% between 2001 and 2011, jumping from 2,200 to 3,300, Time reports. At the same time, every other category of college crime decreased. The numbers mean that 2.2 out of every 10,000 college students in 2011 reported an assault, Business Insider points out. Still, the spike doesn't necessarily mean that more assaults are occurring; it might just mean that victims have become more comfortable coming forward. "It's a good thing that more victims are reporting," one advocate told NPR in response to a similar finding in April. "For far too long, they've been left on their own. And now they're getting the help they need."