NCJ Number
79978
Journal
Police Magazine Volume: 4 Issue: 6 Dated: (November 1981) Pages: 8-12,17-20
Date Published
1981
Length
9 pages
Annotation
Based on interviews with police line officers and management personnel, as well as on research studies, this article presents the pros and cons of an emphasis on college education for police.
Abstract
With the demise of the Federal Law Enforcement Education Program (LEEP), which provided tuition and book expenses for police officers in college courses, the issue of the value of a college education for police performance is becoming crucial as States and localities decide spending priorities under austerity budgets. Many officers, particularly those who have college degrees and are stimulated by an academic environment, are convinced that professional policing requires the knowledge and insights that can only be acquired by college-level academic training. Other officers, many of whom have had college training, argue that the essential skills and knowledge required for effective police performance can be acquired through more limited academic curriculums and on-the-job training and experience. Surveys tend to show that police management personnel are about evenly divided between these contrasting perspectives. Research studies designed to measure the impact of college training on police performance are inconclusive, largely because of the difficulty of identifying commonly accepted measures of police performance. In addition to the widespread belief that college training does not necessarily improve police performance, equal opportunity employment requirements have often been applied to attack college training as a requirement for becoming a police officer. Further, the promotion system often does not advance the academically trained police officers as rapidly as they would like, leaving them frustrated and unfulfilled by the incongruence between the knowledge obtained through college courses and the daily line duties they perform. With Federal funding gone and local financial support shaky, most officers must decide for themselves whether a college education is worth their personal investment. References and footnotes are not provided.