College Degrees Essay

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For several years, law enforcement leaders across the country have debated requiring college degrees for new officers. Currently, only 8% of local police agencies require some college; “9% require a two-year college degree and only 1% require a four-year degree (Gomez-Mejia et al, 2012, p.153). This number seems low seeing that this debate has been around for years. I could not find any statistics, but I believe many more pay bonuses for college degrees as does the Knoxville Police Department (KPD), where I have been employed for the last eighteen years. KPD pays a 7.5% for a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution and this has encouraged officers of all ages to return to college. Why is there such a debate and concern on the subject of police officers having college degrees? Some studies have shown “that college-educated police officers: have significantly …show more content…

A study in St. Paul, Minnesota, took this belief even further and found that officers with bachelor of arts degrees did much better with commendations and discipline than those with bachelor of science degrees (Bostrom, 2005). This could be ”because a bachelor of arts degree emphasizes problem-solving from a variety of viewpoints, develops understanding of how perceptions influence behavior, increases a person's comfort level with ambiguity, and assumes that the things going on in the world are fluid and interrelated” (Bostrom, 2005, par. 25). Dr. Louis Mayo, the Executive Director of the Police

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