Editorial
The Press of Atlantic City, NJ

September 6, 2000

Our position

Modern policing is a complicated affair that requires brains as well as brawn. Every town should require its new officers to have bachelor's degrees.

Today's Police Officers - College Required
  
Police officers cannot have it both ways.

They cannot talk, at salary-negotiation time, about how much policing has changed in recent years, about the complex issues officers must deal with today, about how they are trained professionals they cannot say all this and simultaneously oppose the growing movement to require today’s police officers to have college educations.

Because the officers are right policing has changed. An officer must deal with complex inter-personal issues, myriad legal issues, technology issues. They need the kind of broad-based knowledge that comes with a college degree, preferably a full, four-year bachelor’s degree.

Not that the world isn’t full of fools with college degrees. Or that there aren’t countless police officers out there who excel at their jobs with no higher education other than what they have learned on the street.

But the exceptions do not disprove the rule: Modern policing is a complicated affair that requires brains as well as brawn. Every town should require its new officers to have bachelor’s degrees.

If for no other reason than this: According to Lou Mayo, a former Secret Service agent who is the founder of the Police Association for College Education in Alexandria, Va., studies show that officers with college degrees are less likely to abuse their power than those who don’t have degrees. And that rings true, doesn’t it?

But having said all this, we are not going to wade into the dispute in Absecon about whether to waive a bachelor’s-degree requirement for the chief’s position so that a 27-year veteran with an associate’s degree can get the job. Nor will we wade into the Egg Harbor Township dispute about waiving educational requirements for the captain’s job.

The individuals involved in these specific cases may very well be the kind of men for whom an exception should be made or not. We simply don’t know.

But we know this: The rule in every town should be to require new police hires to have college degrees. The job has changed as any cop will tell you. And it has changed in ways that require the kind of maturity, reasoning ability and understanding that is fostered by a college education.

Towns that put new police officers without college education on the street are short-changing their citizens.