Police and Education

Assessing the Relationship of Education Obtained and Police Officer Careers

p Submitted to Northcentral University

Graduate Faculty of the School of Business and Technology Management

in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

By

Robert Lee Taylor , III

Prescott Valley , Arizona

July 2007 Abstract

Although very diverse and exciting , the police work brings along with it numerous challenges and accountabilities . The police force is expected to use fair means and act responsibly in administering the numerous powers given to them

p With increasing international terrorism and cross-b criminal threats in the US , the role of police is getting critical by the day The Police forces of today are in need of specialized and structured learning programs to enable them to face these threats There have been a number of studies since 1970 to find out whether higher education helps in maintaining integrity and discipline amongst police officers . However , there really hasn 't been any definitive study to find out extent of this correlation between officers ' education and their performance standards and its overall impact on the efficiency levels of police departments

Today 's police force is a diverse one and has to display superior management and interpersonal skills and knowledge . An environment of mutual confidence and trust is important for them to display these skills

Most police organizations , the world over , agree that the best way of improving confidence and trust amongst police forces is adoption of good learning and training practices as well as having minimum educational qualifying criteria for recruitment

This study is an attempt to find out the correlation between police officers ' level of education with their levels of performance of duties and efficiency in delivery of services . A questionnaire was used under the self report survey methodology wherein 100 serving police officers from 5 police departments in North Carolina with varying educational qualifications (high school , associate programs , 2 years of college education and 4 years of college education ) and years of experience were selected as a sample . The immediate superiors of these police officers were sent quesionnaires wherein they had to assess the sampled police officer on 20 different performance measurement variables . These different performance categories were overall performance , verbal and communication skills , public relations , report writing abilities responsiveness to new training , decision making skills and overall commitment levels towards the police department , etc

The results are clear and show a high correlation between the level of education and most of the measures of performance . A very high and significant correlation was found between overall performance and education (r 24 ,

001 . Volume of arrests , number of times discipline was required by the officer and three variables not proving to be significantly related to education . It was also found that the advantages of a college education become apparent only when police officers gain experience . Another interesting finding showed that the overall performance of high school diploma holding officers decreased significantly after five years of experience

Considering the enormous size and diversity...