M.Sc. in Criminal Justice or MBA in CJ?

Hello Scholars,

I am trying to get some insights on which master's degree I am to pursue. I have an MBA in General Management from a non-AACSB accredited foreign school (U.S. regionally accredited per ECE).

I have applied to Lamar University to pursue an M.Sc. in Criminal Justice in Spring 2017. I want to pursue this second master's degree because I want to teach criminal justice courses full-time at a 2-year college. However, I am now thinking of changing to the MBA in Criminal Justice Management. Lamar's MBA is AASCB accredited. The MBA in CJM has 36 credits (12 of which are in CJM, but I would opt to do 6 more as a non-degree seeking to fulfill the 18 credit hour teaching requirement).

What are your thoughts? Do you think this AACSB accredited MBA could qualify me to teach both business and criminal justice courses? Does it make sense to have 2 MBA's?

I have over 5 years of law enforcement experience (foreign police, U.S. municipal police and university police).

I was pursuing an Ed.D. in Leadership at the American College of Education but withdrew after completing my first course (primarily because they don't accept federal aid). I was thinking of going back to Abilene Christian University (Ed.D. in Organizational Leadership) where I withdrew from before my first course started but the tuition is 40k plus books. However, I found and applied to an hybrid Ed.D. in Organizational Leadership at Southeastern University (Lakeland, FL), which costs 27k.

Do you think the Organizational Leadership Ed.D. will more position me for business course teaching or do you think the M.Sc. in CJ with the Ed.D. will be good for criminal justice teaching?

Thank you!

 

Personally I would never go for the second MBA. Too much redundancy. Push forward and get the doctoral degree. If you are most interested in Leadership you might want to look at the University of Cumberlands Leadrship PhD program.

 

Thank you for your feedback. I am more interested in criminal justice than leadership. Either way, I will be pursuing the Ed.D. in Organizational Leadership in Summer 2017. However, I will be pursuing Lamar's master's (whichever one I decide on), in Spring 2017. I plan to take 4 courses per semester (2 each 8 week session) and finish by March 2018. I will only take 1 Ed.D. course (each 12 week term) starting July 2017 until April 2018 when I finish at Lamar, then I will start taking the recommended 2 Ed.D. courses (each 12 week term).

 

If your goal is to teach full-time at a community college, then you should absolutely go for the Master's degree in Criminal Justice. The usual benchmark for teaching undergraduates is a graduate degree plus 18 semester hours in the subject to be taught, but your competition is going to have the full graduate degree, perhaps even a doctoral degree; your practical experience can make up for some of the perceived deficits, but all other things being equal as far as experience, the candidate with the full graduate degree is likely to get the nod.

 

Thank you for your feedback. I agree with you the the M.Sc. in Criminal Justice will be better than just having 18 graduate credits in CJ. In that case, I will pursue the M.Sc. in CJ.