1) Why are scholarly books and journals more reliable than popular sources? Find an example of a scholarly source and a popular source on domestic surveillance. Which one would you recommend to your supervisor and why?
2) Apply what you learned in the Attend section to find 3 scholarly sources in the Library. Include the APA references below. https://youtu.be/rlA1Ig7JT0Q
3) Based on your Read assignment, why is an education important to Criminal Justice professionals? Be sure to cite and reference your sources.
APA FORM BETWEEN ALL 3 QUESTION WORD COUNT MUST BE 1750 WORDS. CITE and reference (MUST HAVE four scholarly sources ) ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THE 1750 COUNT
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Copyright © 2013 International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences (IJCJS) – Official Journal of the South Asian
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This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the HTUCreative Commons
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creation of derivative works without specific permission.
Perceptions of Undergraduate Students on
Criminology and Criminal Justice Education in
the United States: An Empirical Analysis
Youngyol Yim Schanz
1
Slippery Rock University, USA
Abstract
Since the first criminology program for police officers was founded in 1916 at the University of
California at Berkeley in the United States, experts have debated whether baccalaureate degrees in
criminology/criminal justice (C&CJ) programs are necessary for individuals to become police officers,
correctional officers, or probation/parole officers. This study examines how students currently enrolled
in C&CJ programs in the U.S. perceive their programs, drawing on data collected through self-
administered questionnaires and completed by 256 C&CJ undergraduates. The study finds that over
all, students have positive perceptions on C&CJ education. It also finds that students’ career focus
(law enforcement vs. correction) affects their perceptions about C&CJ education.
________________________________________________________________________
Keywords: Education, Criminology, Criminal Justice, Perceptions.
Introduction
The first criminology program for police officers was founded in 1916 at the University
of California at Berkeley in the U.S. (Birzer & Palmiotto, 2002). Since then, the number
of colleges and universities offering criminology or criminal justice (hereafter C&CJ) or
closely related programs has increased nationwide, especially during the 1970s after the
passage of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (Eigenberg & Baro,
1992). According to the most recent statistics from the Department of Education, in 2006
and 2007, 39,206 students earned bachelor’s degrees in the field of security and protective
services, including corrections, criminal justice and law enforcement administration, and
corrections administration (The National Center for Education Statistics, 2009, p. 237).
However, a debate whether college education is necessary for criminal justice
practitioners continues. Carlan (2006) wrote that “Criminal Justice educators are [still]
accused of operating ‘cop shops’ or ‘advanced training academies,’ yet few efforts test these
stereotypes against the experiences of police consumers” (p. 616). Along with the debate,
studies have been conducted to examine the impact of college education on officers’ job
performance (e.g. Paoline & Terrill, 1997; Wimshurst & Ransley, 2007) or on their
increased job satisfaction (e.g., Dantzker, 1994; Zhaoa, Thurmanb & He, 1999). The
1 Associate Professor, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Slippery Rock University,
Slippery Rock, PA 16057, USA. Email: youngyol.schanz@sru.edu
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An Empirical Analysis
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evaluation or assessment of C&CJ programs in higher education has been a popular topic
in the literature since the 1970s. One way to evaluate programs is to incorporate student
input by examining student opinions of program quality. However, little research
specifically focuses on how C&CJ undergraduates perceive their C&CJ programs. The
main goal of this study is to examine those perceptions. More specifically, the present
study answers the following questions:
• How do students perceive C&CJ higher education in relation to their jobs and
careers?
• What is students’ main reason for pursuing a four-year college degree in C&CJ?
• What is C&CJ students’ main obstacle to pursuing a four-year college degree?
• How are students’ demographic and social variables related to their perception of
their C&CJ program?
Due to the fact that few studies have examined how C&CJ majors perceive their
program in higher education, this study is exploratory in nature. Learning about C&CJ
programs from students’ perspectives can yield many benefits. For example, as Benekos
and his associates point out, “Data regarding student perceptions can help faculty develop
teaching strategies that will better educate students about critical issues in the system”
(Benekos, Merlo, Cook & Bagley, 2002, p. 203).
Literature review
College education and career seem to be closely related. After all, all college students
will have to decide on a career path (Mobley, 2000). Some scholars (Blocher & Rapoza,
1981; Laanan, 2000; Payne & Sumter, 2005) have pointed out that career preparation has
been recognized as a crucial mission of higher education. Although career preparation is
one of the most important missions of higher education, some scholars (e.g., Birzer &
Palmiotto, 2002) caution that the inclusion of technical and vocational classes in academic
C&CJ programs may lower these programs’ learning standards as well as the general
perception of the degree program.
C&CJ programs in higher education have been the object of great concern among
many scholars since the 1970s, and as such they have been consistently evaluated and
criticized. Some of these scholars have focused on curriculum descriptions from various
programs (e.g., Adams, 1976; Bennett, & Marshall, 1979; Birzer & Palmiotto, 2002;
Fabianic, 1979a; Kuykendall, 1977; Lytle & Travis, 2008; Mijares & Blackburn, 1990;
Pelfrey, 1982; Southerland, 1991, 2002). Other researchers have specifically analyzed the
descriptions, quality, prestige, and evaluation mechanisms of C&CJ doctoral programs
(e.g., Fabianic, 1979b; Frost & Clear, 2007; Langworthy & Latessa, 1989; Pelfrey, 1982;
Thomas & Bronick, 1984; Steiner & Schwartz, 2007; Thomas, 1987; Travis, 1987). Still
others have focused on scholarly productivity among C&CJ faculty (e.g., Clear, 2001),
faculty members’ scholarly influence in major American C&CJ journals (e.g., Cohn &
Farrington, 2007), and academic standards and accreditation in criminal justice education
(e.g., Southerland, Merlo, Robinson, Benekos& Albanese, 2007).
Some studies have examined the individual educational experience among graduates
from C&CJ programs (e.g., Carlan, 2006; Wimshurst& Allard, 2007). For example,
surveying 1,114 police officers in the State of Alabama, Carlan (2006) found that the 299
officers with a degree from a C&CJ program felt that the degree had considerably
“improved their knowledge and abilities on a wide range of areas from the criminal justice
system to conceptual and managerial skills” (p. 608).
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Students’ perceptions of higher education are complex to investigate, because students’
demographic and social characteristics such as gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic
status, age, and academically related characteristics (e.g., GPA, class standing, major) may
affect their perceptions. This seems to be especially true for C&CJ majors, as they come
from “diverse and often nontraditional family/educational backgrounds” (Wimshurst &
Allard, 2007, p. 233). Some researchers (e.g., Buckley, 1986; Courtright & Mackey,
2004; Gabbidon, Penn, & Richards, 2003; Golden, 1982; Krimmel & Tartaro, 1999;
Tartaro & Krimmel, 2003; Yim, 2009) have examined C&CJ programs from students’
perspectives. However, most of these studies investigated students’ career choices and goals
in light of their gender or race/ethnicity.
A few studies have examined C&CJ majors’ perceptions of C&CJ programs. Using
several survey questions (e.g., “College education in criminology is essential to my career
goal”), Yim (2001) found a significant relationship between students’ gender and
race/ethnicity and their perceptions about their C&CJ programs. More specifically, Yim
found that male students were significantly more likely to view their program favorably
than female students were, and that White students held more favorable perceptions than
racial/ethnic minority students did (Schanz, 2012; Yim, 2001). Surveying 141 C&CJ
undergraduates, Tontodonato (2006) found that approximately 85% of respondents were
either very satisfied or satisfied with their C&CJ program.
Methods
Participants
The current study is unique in two ways from previous studies of students’ perceptions
of C&CJ programs in terms of student population. First, unlike most colleges and
universities offering a general C&CJ program, the particular university from which the
sample was drawn offers two distinctive major programs: criminal justice and law
enforcement. According to the school’s undergraduate catalogue, students finishing the
criminal justice major (hereafter CJU) will be “well-prepared for employment and career
advancement in a range of criminal justice occupations including juvenile justice,
probation and parole, courts and corrections.” The curriculum that CJU majors are
required to complete includes courses on constitutional law, corrections, juvenile justice,
the criminal court system, introductory security management, the dynamics of criminal
sexual assault, women and crime, applied criminology, and gangs. The catalogue describes
the law enforcement major (LE, hereafter) as a program that “helps individuals develop
the knowledge, perspectives and skills for successful law enforcement careers in state,
county and municipal law enforcement agencies.” LE majors are required to complete
courses on topics such as legal and critical issues in law enforcement, patrol operations,
community-oriented policing, criminal procedure and investigation, and police culture, as
well as a practicum on law enforcement skills.
Second, the student body of this particular university has a large percentage of
nontraditional students. Although the literature offers no consistent definition of
“nontraditional” students, it seems reasonable to define them as students who are 23 years
old and older (e.g., Bell-Scriber, 2008). The majority of students in the university tend to
be older and to have job and family responsibilities, although the number of traditional
students has been increasing in the last several years. When the study was conducted, the
average age of the students in both the CJU and LE programs was approximately 28 years,
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An Empirical Analysis
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and 33% of students in the programs were already working in the criminal justice field as
police officers, correctional officers, or probation/parole officers.
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To obtain a high representation of the student population, this study initially recruited
participants from all students enrolled in courses offered in CJU and LE programs during
the spring of 2006. The data analysis included 256 surveys after excluding 50 surveys filled
out by non-majors. Also, seven surveys were excluded due to a large amount of missing
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An Empirical Analysis
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data. Approximately 68% of the study population participated in the study. Table 1
depicts the characteristics of the sample population.
Table 1 shows that 52% of the respondents (N=133) were male and 47.7% (N=122)
were female. The majority of the respondents (N=194, 75.8%) were White, and 62
respondents (24.2%) were non-White. The mean age among the sample was
approximately 27 years. One third of the students (33.2%) in the sample said that they
were currently employed in the criminal justice system. Almost 45% of the students were
LE majors, and 52% of the students were CJU majors. Table 1 also shows that the study
sample represents the study population relatively well in regard to gender, race, and age.
Data Collection
Data were collected during the first three weeks of January 2012. The researcher
contacted course instructors to recruit potential study participants. Instructors received
basic information regarding the research (e.g., purpose of the study, data collection
method, and human subject protections) along with the survey questionnaire and were
asked to participate in the study. Once an instructor decided to participate in the study,
he or she distributed the survey to students in the class. Instructors asked students to read
a consent form attached to the survey before participating in the survey. This consent
form gave students several pieces of information, including the purpose of the study, the
data collection method and procedure, the time it would take to fill out the survey,
human subject issues, and the researcher’s contact information. Those students who
decided to participate in the study completed the survey. Students who had already filled
out the survey were instructed not to fill it out again. Once the participants completed the
surveys, instructors collected the surveys and returned them to the researcher.
Measures of Variables
Perception of college education in C&CJ was measured using five items: P1 (“College
education in CJ is essential for my career goal”), P2 (“College education in CJ is essential
for my current/future job”), P3 (“College education in CJ will help me perform my job
better”), P4 (“College education in CJ will help me receive a high salary”), and P5
(“College education in CJ will help me get promotions”). The survey asked respondents
to respond to each statement on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 means “strongly disagree”
and 10 means “strongly agree.” Also, students’ overall perception of college education in
C&CJ was measured by the average scores among the five items (Cronbach’s alpha= .847).
Results
Perceptions of C&CJ Education
This study found that students’ overall perceptions of CJ education were relatively
favorable. As shown in Table 2, the overall average score for the five survey items was
8.2906, indicating students’ tendency to strongly agree that their college education in
C&CJ is essential to their career goal and to their current or future job. The highest score
was found for item 1 (“College education in CJ is essential for my career goal”)
( =8.5630), and the lowest score was found for item 4 (“College education in CJ will
help me receive a high salary”) ( =7.9255). Interestingly, the lowest standard deviation
was found for item 1 (2.17468), indicating a lack of variability among students’ answers
when it comes to their belief that higher education is essential to their career goal.
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Table 2. Overall Perceptions of CJ Education
________________________________________________________________________
Item N (Mean) Mode S. D. Range
________________________________________________________________________
P1 254 8.5630 10.00 2.17468 9.00
P2 255 8.2392 10.00 2.62664 9.00
P3 255 8.4510 10.00 2.30126 9.00
P4 255 7.9255 10.00 2.29479 9.00
P5 255 8.1882 10.00 2.20858 9.00
P 254 8.2906 10.00 1.81382 8.00
________________________________________________________________________
P1 (College education in CJ is essential for my career goal); P2 (College education in CJ is
essential for my current/future job; P3 (College education in CJ will help me perform my job
better.); P4 (College education in CJ will help me receive a high salary.) and; P5 (College
education in CJ will help me get promotions.); P (overall perceptions: Average scores among five
items).
Perceptions of C&CJ Education & Selected Variables
Table 3 presents the bivariate Pearson’s correlations among students’ perceptions of CJ
education and selected variables, along with their probability levels.
Table 3. Correlation: Perceptions of CJ Education & Selected Variables
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As Table 3 shows, students’ demographic variables, such as gender, race/ethnicity, and
age, were not significantly related to their perceptions of C&CJ education. Similarly,
students’ academically related variables (e.g., class standing and GPA), along with several
other variables including their parents’ educational level and the first generation in their
family to go a four-year college, did not seem to be significantly related to students’
perceptions. Only three variables were found to be significantly related to students’
perceptions: academic major, employment status, and marital status. Independent samples
t-tests were performed to determine how specifically these variables relate to student’s
perceptions (see Table 4).
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As shown in Table 4, overall, LE majors ( =8.5632) were significantly more likely to
have favorable perceptions of C&CJ higher education than CJU majors were ( =8.0870,
p>.05). In fact, compared to CJU majors, LE majors tended to strongly agree with all five
items (P1 through P5). However, statistical differences between these two groups were
found among three items (P1, P2, and P5, p>.05).
When asked whether they were currently employed in the criminal justice system or
related agencies, 85 students said yes and 169 students said no. Students who were
employed in the CJ system showed slightly more favorable perceptions than their
counterparts in their overall program perception (P). However, an independent t-test
showed that these two groups’ perceptions did not differ significantly. When each item
was separately examined, it emerged that students who were currently employed in CJ
agencies were significantly more likely to believe that CJ education will help them to earn
a higher salary (P4) and to get promotions (P5) (p>.05).
Decision to Go to College and Obstacles
When students were asked about their main reason for pursuing a four-year degree, the
majority of respondents (33%; N=85) answered that they anticipated it to be “personally
satisfying.” The second most common reason was “to advance career” (28.5% of
respondents; N=73), and the third reason was “a job requirement” (almost 12% of
respondents; n=30). Only 12 respondents (4.7%) said that they wanted to change their
careers. The two least desirable reasons to pursue higher education were “for salary
purpose” and “for promotion in job.” Interestingly, Pearson’s chi-square (20.370, df=6)
shows that males and females differed significantly in terms of why they chose to pursue a
four-year degree (p< .05). The most common reason among females (46.8%) was personal
satisfaction, whereas it was career advancement among males (35.5%). Also, the least
desirable reason among females (1.8%) was “for promotion,” whereas it was “for salary”
among males (0.8%).
When students were asked what their main obstacle was to pursuing a four-year
degree, the two most predominant answers were “conflict with work schedules” (29.3%;
N=75) and “finances” (28.5%; N=75). Family obligations were identified as an obstacle
by 24 students (9.4%). Twenty-nine students (11.3%) said they did not have any obstacles.
Lack of motivation and course availability were found to be the least common obstacles
among respondents. When the relationship between race/ethnicity and obstacles was re-
examined, it was found that the most common obstacle among non-Whites (39.3%) was
“finances,” whereas “work schedule” was the most common obstacle among Whites
(36.2%). However, the result of chi-square test shows no significant difference between
White and non-White students.
Other Findings
Several interesting results from the present study are worth mentioning. In Table 3,
correlation analysis shows a close relationship between a student’s gender or race/ethnicity
and his or her major. Among 115 LE majors, there were 90 males and 25 females, whereas
there were 37 males and 94 females among 131 CJU majors (for details, see Yim, 2009).
In fact, t-tests showed that male students were more likely to choose law enforcement
programs than female students were (p<.001). In the same way, among 115 LE majors,
there were 97 Whites and only 18 non-Whites, whereas there were 89 Whites and 43
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An Empirical Analysis
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non-Whites among 131 CJU majors. Further t-tests also showed that White students
were more likely to choose LE programs than non-White students were (p<.05) (for
details, see Schanz, 2012).
As Table 3 shows, this study found an association between students’ race/ethnicity and
whether they are the first generation in their family to go to college (FIRSTG). When
students were asked whether they were the first generation in their family to go to college,
39.5% (n=101) responded yes and 59% (n=151) responded no. Among the “yes”
respondents, 64.4% of students (n=65) were White and 35.6% (n=36) were non-White.
However, among the “no” respondents, 83.4% of respondents were White and only
16.6% of respondents were non-White. In fact, a Pearson’s chi-square shows that non-
White students were significantly more likely to be the first generation in their family to
go to college than White students were (p<.01). When examining the relationship
between students’ major and FIRSTG, this study found that only 28% of LE majors but
almost 50% of CJU majors said that they were the first generation in their family going to
college. In fact, a chi-square shows that these two groups were significantly different
(df=2, p<.01).
When examining the age factor in relation to students’ major, this study found that
almost 47% of LE majors and 68% of CJU majors were nontraditional students (age 23 or
older). A chi-square shows that CJU majors were significantly more likely to be
nontraditional students than LE majors were (df=2, p<.05). Interestingly, a student’s age
was found to be inversely but significantly related to his or her parents’ educational level
(p<.01). When a bivariate regression was performed to predict students’ age when starting
college based on their parents’ educational level, beta (β) was found to be -0.124 for the
father’s educational level and -0.129 for the mother’s educational level. This particular
result indicates that the higher the parent’s educational level was, the earlier students
started their college education. This result also indicates that the mother’s educational
level has a slightly higher impact on a student’s college education than the father’s
educational level does. The R-square was found to be 0.49, indicating a relatively strong
relationship between students’ college-entry age and parental educational level.
Parental education level is also a very important variable to predict students’
perceptions of CJ education. When a regression analysis was performed using the
backward method, several independent variables were added to the model, including
gender, GPA, race/ethnicity, age, marital status, first generation in the family going to
college, mother’s education level, and father’s educational level. Interestingly, only two
variables, the father’s education level and the mother’s educational level, were included in
the final model (p<.05). This result indicates that when we predict students’ overall
perception of C&CJ education, their parental educational level is the only variable
significantly related to it. It was also found that the higher their father’s educational level
(β=0.220), the higher students’ perception of their C&CJ education was, and the lower
their mother’s educational level (β=-0.185), the higher students’ perception of their C&CJ
education was. In other words, a student whose father has a higher education level tends
to perceive their program more favorably than a student whose father has a lower
educational level does. However, a student whose mother has a higher education level
will likely have a less favorable perception of their program than a student whose mother
has a lower educational level does.
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Discussion
Overall, in the present study, CJ majors had a highly favorable perception of their
C&CJ higher education. More specifically, LE majors were more likely than CJU majors
to believe that higher education in C&CJ was essential for their career goals as well as for
their current or future jobs. This study cannot provide any theoretical explanations for this
finding. However, as far as their careers or jobs were concerned, LE majors seemed to
appreciate the importance of college education more than CJU majors did. In the future,
studies should be designed that can offer theoretical explanations about the relationship
between majors (LE vs. CJU) and perceptions of college education.
Students already employed in CJ-related fields were significantly more likely than their
counterparts to believe that CJ education would help them to earn higher salaries and get
promotions. However, when a chi-square was performed to examine whether a student’s
current employment status in the CJ system is related to his or her decision to pursue a
four-year degree, it found no significant relationship between these two variables.
Additional studies should be conducted to examine further how or whether these two
variables are related.
Students’ gender, race/ethnicity, and GPA were not significantly related to their
perception of CJ education. However, it should be mentioned that non-Whites seemed
to have more favorable perceptions toward CJ education than their counterparts.
Although the present study cannot determine why non-Whites hold more favorable
attitudes than Whites do, one can speculate that for some reason, non-White students
seem to appreciate the importance of their higher education more than White students do.
Surveying 400 CJ students from 12 four-year colleges and universities, Krimmel and
Tartaro (1999) found that “non-whites believe that finding a job would not be easy” for
them due to their race/ethnicity (p. 286). That attitude could lead them to look for other
resources to help them in their job search, such as seeking a college degree.
Although males’ perception of CJ education did not differ significantly from that of
females, males gave higher scores than females did to all the items except item 4 (“College
education in CJ will help me receive a high salary”). The literature shows mixed results
regarding whether gender is directly related to students’ perceptions of their C&CJ
programs. Surveying 147 graduates from a CJ program in Australia, Wimshurst and Allard
(2007) reported that gender was not significantly related to either a student’s educational
experience (e.g., “the [CJ] degree gave me a good knowledge of the criminal justice
system”) or a student’s employment outcomes (e.g, “Every day at work I encounter
situations that my degree helped prepare me for”). On the contrary, Yim (2001) found
that male students were significantly more likely to favorably perceive their programs than
female students were. Surveying 411 recent graduates of eight criminal justice program in
Louisiana, Winfree and Evans (1984) found that females regarded C&CJ education as “less
meaningful, career-wise,” than males did (p. 75). The relationship between gender and
students’ perceptions of higher education in C&CJ programs should be carefully and
thoroughly examined in the near future.
Conclusion
The main purpose of this study was to examine how C&CJ undergraduates perceive
their higher education. Despite several limitations mentioned above, the current study has
added important findings to C&CJ literature. It found that overall; C&CJ majors from this
particular sample hold favorable perceptions of their higher education. It also found that
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An Empirical Analysis
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students who seek a career in the LE area are significantly more likely to hold favorable
perceptions of their program than students who seek work in a non-LE area (e.g.,
corrections). Understanding C&CJ students’ perception of their program is important for
C&CJ educators because, as stated earlier, this type of data can eventually help faculty
better educate students (Benekos, et al., 2002).
The data from the current study provide great news for us as educators, since at least
we know that our students think that we offer them something of value as far as their
career goes. This is also great news for our students, because at least they do not think that
pursuing a college degree in C&CJ is a waste of their time or money. Whether our
students are much different from other students in the U.S. is outside scope of this paper,
but at least as far as our students are concerned, this study found that they believe their
college education in C&CJ to be very important for their careers in the CJ system.
More than 20 years ago, Joan Petersilia (1991) said in her presidential address
celebrating the 50th year of the American Society of Criminology, “Criminology is now a
respected academic field, rigorous in research, discriminating in its hiring and
advancement criteria, and highly productive” (p. 2, emphasis added). However, some
scholars were cautious. Examining program size and matriculation numbers, Todd Clear
wrote in his 2001 American Criminal Justice Sciences presidential address that “criminal
justice is certainly large enough to matter in the broad scheme of higher education. But it
is also true that the nature of the criminal justice degree matters even more than its
frequency” (p. 723). After all, as Courtright and Mackey (2004) pointed out, it seems that
the “jury is still out regarding the importance and efficiency of higher education in CJ,
particularly law enforcement” (p. 313). Perhaps it is our job to convince the jury of the
importance and efficiency of higher education in C&CJ in the U.S. As Braswell and
Whitehead pointed out, we need to let the world know that “we are not just teaching our
students about criminal justice and criminology, we are also teaching them … about their
potential for making a difference in the world around them” (p. 220).
Limitations
For several reasons, this study’s findings should not be generalized. First, although its
sample size is good at over 250 participants, and 68% of the study population participated
in the study, it recruited its research participants using a convenience sampling. Also, the
current findings may be limited by the fact that the data were collected from one
institution in the Midwest. To further examine students’ career goals and their perceptions
of careers, future studies should collect data from several geographical locations and from
samples more representative of populations in terms of gender and race/ethnicity.
It may be argued that the present study’s results are also limited in that it examined
only currently enrolled students, rather than graduates working in the field. However,
over 33% of study participants were currently employed in the CJ field when the study
was conducted. Also, as mentioned earlier, a t-test found no significant difference between
students who were employed in the CJ field and their counterparts in terms of their
perception of their C&CJ program. However, future researchers are advised to examine
how graduates’ perceptions are different from those of non-graduates, if in fact they do
differ.
International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences
Vol 8 Issue 2 June – December 2013
© 2013 International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences. All rights reserved. Under a creative commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 India License
117
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