The National Student Clearinghouse released a report last week detailing where the thousands of college students who were displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita enrolled.

The report included student enrollment and transfer data from six participating Louisiana institutions that were unable to resume their fall semester because of the hurricanes. The decision to compile these statistics was made by the Clearinghouse Advisory Committee in response to the amount of attention surrounding the disaster.

"This was at the top of [the committee's] mindset," Kathleen Dugan, spokesperson for the report, said.

The NSC is a non-profit organization formed by the higher education community for the purpose of streamlining the student record verification process. More than 2,800 colleges, encompassing 91 percent of college students in the U.S., participate in the NCS.

The report included 18,602 students from Delgado Community College, Dillard University, Loyola University of New Orleans, Tulane University, the University of New Orleans and Xavier University of Louisiana.

Although all of these universities suspended classes for the fall semester, the majority of these students came from Tulane University and UNO.

According to the report, more than 70 percent of the displaced students ended up in ten states, with more than half in either Louisiana or Texas.

Louisiana State University accepted the most displaced students, taking in 3,271 students. A total of 1,017 institutions that participate in the Clearinghouse accepted displaced students.

The report found that although only slightly more than half of the students had been enrolled in a private college, 73.28 percent of these students ended up in a public institution, compared with the 26.72 percent of students who ended up in a private institution.

The University of Wisconsin was among those who accepted displaced students, allowing these students to attend fall semester classes without having to pay tuition.

"We kind of joined a lot of schools around the country in offering the students a haven," UW spokesperson John Lucas said.

In addition to waiving tuition fees, the UW also has found creative ways to assist the displaced students. The athletic department, for example, donated clothes to students not used to a cold climate.

Although universities across the country have been very accommodating to the students affected by the hurricanes, they are encouraging these students to return to their original universities.

"Knowing what those institutions are still going through, we want [the students] to make a decision to return there," Lucas said. "No one wants to poach students."

Dugan said the National Student Clearinghouse plans to conduct further reports to see how many students return to universities that were shut down for the fall semester.

In addition to this report, the NSC is providing services to help ensure the enrollment and degree records of displaced students and alumni can continue to be verified for potential employers and institutions, and so the affected universities can focus on their recovery efforts.