Should police officers be required to have a college degree?

Carlie Owen
CJ-1010-Sp16
Gregory Butler
April 27, 2016

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Carlie Owen
Professor Greg Butler
CJ-1010: Criminal Justice
April 26, 2016
Should police officers be required to have a college degree?
Law enforcement is considered to be heroes by most people in our society. Police officers
are supposed to put their lives on the line to protect and serve the people of their communities.
They are the ones to enforce laws and punish those who do not follow those laws, provide
services, prevent crime and preserve the peace. Police officers have to witness and deal with
various things that you probably would never imagine. Officers also deal with a lot of nonsense
like responding to noise complaints and paperwork. Officers also see themselves primarily as
crime fighters, or crook catchers a perception that often leads people into what they believe
will be an exciting career in law enforcement. Although the job certainly offers challenges unlike
any other, police officers normally do not spend the majority of their time in law enforcement
duties. After surveying a years worth of dispatch data from the Wilmington police department,
researchers Jack Greene and Carl Klockars found that officers spent only about half of their time
enforcing the law or dealing with crimes. The rest of their time was spent on order maintenance,
service provision, traffic patrol, and medical assistance. Most arrests are made for crimes of
disorder or public annoyances rather than violent or property crimes. (Gaines and Miller P. 135)

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Today to even be considered for a decent high paying job you must have some sort of
college degree. Our culture has put such an emphasis on people receiving higher education, if
you dont attend some sort of college or school after you graduate high school it is considered
taboo. There are so many various fields that you can receive your degree in, but the question is
do you think Police officers should be required to have a college degree?
Currently the basic minimum requirements to become a police officer are

Be a citizen of the United States

Never been convicted of a felony
Have or be eligible to have a drivers license in the state where the department is located
Be at least twenty one years of age
Meet eyesight and weight requirements
Today 82 percent of all local police departments requires at least a high school diploma,

and 9 percent require a degree from a two year college. Recruits with college or university
experience are generally thought to have an advantage in hiring and promotion. (Gaines/Miller
P. 145) Some police officers believe that they should not be required to have a college degree
because they learn their required skills by experiences on the street not in a classroom. My
personal opinion is that every single officer should be required to have at least their bachelors
degree in criminal justice and or sociology/psychology. Not only should they have a bachelors
degree, they should have to enroll and complete a police training program that prepares them for
whatever situations they might encounter and how to properly handle them. I think police
officers have too serious of a job for it to be taken lightly. Honestly the more education and
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Training the better, you can never have too much. Only the best professionally qualified person
should have the ultimate-and awesome-police power of summarily depriving a person of liberty
or even life. And only such a person has the tools to deal with the many problems that afflict a
community. A college degree, as many authorities have pointed out, is the mark of professional
qualification. (http://www.policechiefmagazine.org) A doctor, similar to a police officer are in
charge of peoples lives and have to complete years of schooling years beyond a bachelors
degree. Officers are in charge of peoples lives but weapons are also involved that could
seriously injure or kill someone. Law enforcement is one of the most important careers in our
society to keep it in order and functioning, so I dont believe that we should take the applicants
for the jobs lightly. There should be a detailed screening process the applicants have to go
through in the hiring process to guarantee the most qualified people are chosen. As I mentioned
earlier in the paper a police officers duties often do not involve law enforcement but instead
mundane tasks, but something to take into consideration is if we just prepare officers for these
tasks and no other serious situations they might encounter there could be serious consequences.
Have you ever been watching the news and there is a story about how an innocent person was
killed by gun fire and your heart just sinks? What if this could have been prevented and that
innocent persons life could have been saved with proper training to the police who fired the
gun? There are about 700,000 state and local police officers across the nation. Mayo estimates
that 25% to 30% have four-year degrees. He says departments have been reluctant to adopt
stricter recruiting standards despite evidence suggesting that better-educated cops perform better.

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In an analysis of disciplinary cases against Florida cops from 1997 to 2002, the International
Association of Chiefs of Police found that officers with only high school educations were the
subjects of 75% of all disciplinary actions. Officers with four-year degrees accounted for 11% of
such actions. (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-17-policeeducation_x.htm)
On the other end of the spectrum, if we start requiring all law enforcement to have these
higher education requirements to be considered for employment we might see a drastic drop in
people applying because they are unable to meet the requirements for various different reasons.
This unfortunately could lead to very serious consequences for our society and its overall
functioning. If we start requiring these qualifications for police officers the amount of people
who apply could shrink which would lead to an insufficient amount of law enforcement in our
communities. Criminals could take advantage of the lack of law enforcement and crime could
skyrocket and it would be impossible to get under control.
There is a fine line that we cannot cross in order to keep the peace within society. But
how much is too much in concerns to requirements for law enforcement? We should always be
searching for ways to better our communities and if raising the bar for police officers is the way
we should take action. But we should also be very aware of the outcome it could have. We live in
the greatest country there is so lets keep it that way!

Bibliography:
"USATODAY.com - Police Agencies Find It Hard to Require Degrees." USATODAY.com
- Police Agencies Find It Hard to Require Degrees. N.p., 18 Sept. 2006. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.
"Police Chief Magazine - View Article." Police Chief Magazine - View Article. N.p., n.d.
Web. 27 Apr. 2016.
Gaines, Larry K., and Roger Leroy Miller. CJ 1010 Criminal Justice Salt Lake
Community College. Mason: Cengage Learning, 2013. Print.