Comparing Bachelor’s Degree Curricula at Three Groups of Colleges and Universities: Flexibility or Idiosyncrasy?^*

* A version of this paper was presented at the 2016 annual meetings of the Southern Criminal Justice Association, 7–10 September, Savannah, GA.

Abstract

Despite baccalaureates in criminal justice (BCJ) being among the most awarded degrees in this country, little published research has appeared in recent years on these programs or their curricula. Using 2015–2016 data collected from the population of BCJ-granting institutions (N = 670) in the U.S., we partially replicated Southerland’s 2002 Criminal justice curricula in the United States: A decade of Change and extended Sloan and Buchwalter’s 2016 The state of bachelor’s degree programs in the United States: Institutional, department, and curricula features analyses of BCJ curricula by comparing selected features of them across three groups of colleges/universities: public, private, not-for-profit, and private, for-profit. Results revealed significant differences existed in curricula by institutional locus of control, indicating a general lack of consensus on undergraduate curricula, including in such fundamental areas as total hours needed for the major. We discuss the implications of these results for the discipline, including revisiting accreditation as a mechanism for creating standardized curricula, and suggest further research on the status of undergraduate education to help insure the discipline offers the highest quality baccalaureate programs possible.

Acknowledgments

We thank J. Heith Copes and especially O. Hayden Griffin, III for helpful comments. Remaining errors are the authors’ responsibility.

Notes

* A version of this paper was presented at the 2016 annual meetings of the Southern Criminal Justice Association, 7–10 September, Savannah, GA.

¹ We accept that “criminal justice” courses have been offered in American colleges and universities since the early twentieth century (Southerland, Merlo, Robinson, Benekos, & Albanese, 2007). However, it was during the 1960s that the federal government made dramatic investments into creating university-based training programs for police officers that evolved first into associate’s degree programs and then bachelor’s programs (Morn, 1995).

² This study’s focus was on baccalaureate programs associated with the two-digit U.S. Department of Education Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) code 43 designated as “homeland security, law enforcement, firefighting, and protective services” which subsumes CIP codes 43.01 “criminal justice and corrections,” 43.02 “fire protection,” 43.03 “homeland security,” and 43.99 “homeland security, law enforcement, firefighting, and protective services—other” (United States Department of Education, n.d.). Omitted were degrees in criminology, law and society, or those in sociology, political science or public administration that offered specializations in criminal justice.

³ According to the Georgia Public Safety Training Center, for-profit Argosy University, the University of Phoenix, and Reinhardt University (among others) all grant university credit for POST certification and training (https://www.gpstc.org/career-development/college-credit/). American International University even awards up to 36 credit hours toward a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice for students possessing POST certification (https://www.aiuniv.edu/tuition-financial-aid/transfer-credit).

⁴ Reviews of decades’ long efforts by members of the field that address substantive issues in criminal justice curricula are available from Albanese (1995), Morn (1995), and especially Southerland et al. (2007). Rather than rehashing these debates, this section examines standards for BCJ curricula developed by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) along with information found in Southerland (2002) as the basis for the comparative analyses we conducted, the results of which appear below.

⁵ Southerland (2002) included all baccalaureate-level criminal justice programs in the 50 states and District of Columbia stratified by the five regions represented in the ACJS as the population from which she drew her samples. She then used two sources, Peterson’s Guide and the College Blue Book, to identify baccalaureate programs that had “criminal justice” in the title at schools in the states, and those became the sampling frame (she used a 1 in 6 random start, resulting in an approximate 17% random sample). Southerland consulted university or college catalogs to identify curricular features of BCJ programs; she did not distinguish locus of control for schools in her two samples. Because the present study was of baccalaureate programs associated with CIP code 43 of the U.S. Department of Education (n.d.) Classification of Instructional Programs, how programs were selected in the studies differed. We used Southerland (2002) as the most recent example of what prior, national-level research had discovered about BCJ curricula and against which we compared our results.

⁶ In addition to the others, we included whether an internship or a capstone course was required.

⁷ Since the “cut point” for inclusion was >30%, we can only surmise that including the figure—since it was less than 30%—was an error.

⁸ Detailed discussion of the larger project’s methods is found in Sloan and Buchwalter (2016).

⁹ Branch campuses offering bachelor’s degree programs in criminal justice were each counted as unique schools. In isolated instances, a school had more than one department offering a criminal justice-related degree as identified by the CIP code we used and was included twice in the directory.

¹⁰ For example, we learned that during academic 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 more than two dozen branch campuses of the University of Phoenix ceased accepting new students into their BCJ programs.

¹¹ The complete list of schools is available on request from the first author.

¹² Available at https://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/lookup/lookup.php.

¹³ Private, non-profit institutions included both sectarian and non-sectarian schools. For-profit institutions included those owned by either publicly traded or closely held corporations.

¹⁴ We note that Morphew and Hartley (2006) did not distinguish between the mission statements of privately controlled for- and non-profit institutions. We note also that Kinser (2005, 2006, 2007) focused primarily on schools owned by publicly traded, shareholder-owned companies.

¹⁵ Although we collected data for up to two degree programs offered, the current study only reports results of analyses completed for the first program listed at department websites.

¹⁶ Some may question the calculation of inferential statistics to estimate parameters when working with population data. One justification for doing so is to consider a specific population as a sample of all possible populations containing the variable(s) of interest. Thus, we treated the population of BCJ-granting schools as a sample. For discussion of this point, see Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (2009).

¹⁷ In such instances, the core of the program had to include a set of “basic” criminal justice courses including Introduction to Criminal Justice and Introduction to Criminology, survey courses on policing and corrections, and criminal law or procedure. In other words, the program had to include core courses in both criminal justice and the related field (e.g. political science).

¹⁸ Southerland (2002) apparently treated total hours in the major as “required” hours and therefore did not distinguish total hours from hours associated with courses that students must take.

¹⁹ We thank Hayden Griffin for raising this point.