Posted by Tom Higgins, Professor, and Legal Studies Teaching Chair. Professor Higgins is an ICC graduate with a degree in Police Science, a bachelor's degree, and a law degree. You can review his background and contact information here.
We meet regularly with our Advisory Board consisting of the Sheriffs, Police Chiefs, and other police, corrections, and probation command staff from across our region. We had such a meeting yesterday.
The purpose of those meetings is twofold. First, these individuals provide the best source of information on what they see in our students as applicants, employees, and public servants. They help us prepare students and graduates to meet the ever-changing expectations and challenges of law enforcement and other justice careers. And second, they and the communities they serve rely on us to meet the need for a sufficient number of applicants who understand and are prepared to meet the expectations for entering this career path.
The keywords appear in the last sentence of the previous paragraph “expectations for entering this career path”.
We offer an applied science degree and a certificate in Law Enforcement. We have offered a variation of these career-oriented programs since our community college was founded. At some point in time, we followed most community colleges in the United States and we developed and pushed for a “criminal justice” transfer degree. In the years since, as was the case in many other courses of study, we encouraged students to pursue our Criminal Justice transfer degree. We set the expectation that the most likely path to enter a job in law enforcement was a 4-year degree. For a period of time, this was true for many but not all entry-level law enforcement positions.
We don’t need to revisit or debate this shift except to acknowledge that some of this was driven by circumstances of the times and a job market that provided large numbers of applicants who did have a 4-year degree.
Fast forward to 2023 and applicant pools for our local police and corrections employers are a fraction of what they once were. There is a need and an opportunity before us. It is time to adjust the narrative for where we direct students who know they want to pursue a career in law enforcement. Our non-transfer path is the best option to meet the best interests of our community and our students. It isn’t only the best option. It is a reality of what occurs with our community college students. It is a reality that is backed up by our Advisory Board. The majority of this group, and most of our graduates begin working in a law enforcement job and then work to complete a transfer degree.
There are many reasons for this reality and many underlying benefits for our local agencies, communities, and our students.
My observations as an instructor, advisor, and mentor as well as my time serving as Commissioner involved in the hiring process lead me to believe that we should return to directing high school and community college students with an interest in a career in law enforcement toward the non-transfer Law Enforcement path. These are just a few of the reasons for this position:
The Law Enforcement curriculum allows our students to complete career-specific, technical, procedure, and service-supporting courses that are not available in the more theory-oriented Criminal Justice transfer degree;
A 4-year degree is not required for entry into this field and despite transfer degrees, our Advisory Board, our graduates, and our faculty represent the reality that regionally and nationally, this is still a common occurrence;
The majority of our Law Enforcement degree graduates will in fact transfer successfully to our surrounding 4-year institutions;
Agencies will pay or provide support for employees who pursue a mission-related bachelor or graduate degree;
Law Enforcement is a physically demanding job and many of our graduates transition to another job or career after around 20 years. Experience assisting graduates making this transition leads me to believe that beginning your career at 21 years of age leaves you with a greater number of employment opportunities for that next chapter in life after a career in law enforcement; and
A student who completes the ICC Law Enforcement degree immediately after high school can begin testing and likely earn a very good career opportunity as a law enforcement officer around or shortly after completion of this degree.
I will close with this final observation. There was a time when local law enforcement agencies recruited from college campuses across and outside of our state. While the recruitment efforts may have led to officers hired from those other regions or states, the overwhelming trend was that those individuals did not stay in our community. They took our training and experience and moved closer to “home” or another location. In my experience, this is not a circumstance unique to our community. Some of the best examples of Law Enforcement Officers in this community are individuals who grew up in, reflect the diversity of, know, and want to remain in and serve this community.
