Shortage of Criminal Justice Professors - Low Pay

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by sanantone, Aug 20, 2014.

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  1. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    I didn't want to put this in the other forums since it's not specific to distance education.

    I was thinking that professor salaries would be greatly affected by supply and demand. I had one professor tell my class that those with a Phd in criminal justice will not have a risk of driving a taxi like someone with a PhD in history. He said there is a shortage of people with a PhD in criminal justice/criminology, and schools are still forced to hire those with PhDs in sociology and other allied fields to fill open positions. I had another professor tell our class that the school had to make their hiring decisions fast. In two weeks, half of the applicants for a CJ position at our school had already accepted offers at other universities. He said there are more job openings than applicants, and it's been that way for years. I found these websites that also say there is a shortage of criminal justice professors.
    UALR offers first criminal justice doctorate program | thv11.com

    This article is a little misleading. If you count criminology and criminal justice together (these are now being used interchangeably), there are way more than 18 PhD programs. This article, however, does talk about a shortage of professors in this field.
    What is Criminal Justice

    He lists 30 programs elsewhere on his website, but he obviously just grabbed this list off of the U.S. News rankings. There are even more PhD programs than that.
    Graduate Schools in Criminal Justice Mega-List

    Some other articles that talk about the shortage of professors.
    http://web.missouri.edu/~jlfm89/Training%20in%20Law%20and%20Behavioral%20Sciences.pdf
    Careers - USD

    So, with this great shortage, how come criminal justice professors are paid so little? According to BLS, postsecondary teachers of criminal justice and law enforcement have the lowest median salaries. The salary they list is in line with what I've seen.
    Postsecondary Teachers : Occupational Outlook Handbook: : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

    Other rankings don't have them dead last, but they are still among the lowest.
    Average Faculty Salaries by Field and Rank at 4-Year Colleges and Universities, 2010-11 - Faculty Data - The Chronicle of Higher Education
    Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty Salaries - HigherEdJobs
     
  2. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    It's a niche market. The world is running after degrees in business, the medical field, education and other areas -- but the world isn't running after CJ degrees. On the one hand, the CJ field is increasing (when private security is included in the equation), but it's still a small niche market in the grand scheme of things. CJ (and security) programs tend to be small, which means there is less of a need for CJ instructors. Also, there are not a lot of CJ research universities getting tons of corporate and research dollars, especially when compared to the other large fields (business, medical, et al). CJ is interesting, but it's not wildly popular and it's not a big money maker.
     
  3. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    But, there are less popular fields in which professors are making more money. CJ might not have the highest number of students, but it's far from the lowest. For the 2011-2012 school year, there were over 53k bachelor's degrees conferred in homeland security/firefighting/law enforcement. I'm assuming that's where they lumped all of the CJ programs because they don't fit anywhere else. In comparison, there were over 53k degrees conferred in English Language and Literature and over 47k degrees conferred in computer and information sciences.
    Bachelor's degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by field of study: Selected years, 1970-71 through 2011-12

    CJ is a lot like sociology and psychology. Many of the research dollars come from non-profits and the government.
     
  4. NorCal

    NorCal Active Member

    CJ degrees lack utility, even within LE. So this doesn't surprise me in the least. I remember being on a SWAT exercise and being talk out of going the CJ route by two different Police Chiefs. In hindsight, it was some of the best advice I ever received. But thats my experience in California, so your experiences may differ.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 20, 2014
  5. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    Do you ever want to teach CJ at the collegiate level?

    At a meeting, our academic provost said that his bank manager had a bachelors in CJ. Having a degree in CJ should help to educate students to become better overall citizens, just like any other liberal arts degree. Too many people believe that a degree in CJ requires a person to be a police officer, but that's too narrow of a pigeonhole.
     
  6. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    The same could be said about a lot of liberal arts majors, but I'm trying to understand why CJ professors are paid less for a subject that's just as popular as higher paying subjects if there really is a shortage of CJ professors. I think Me Again might be on to something with the research dollars. While my professors often get grants and are paid for consulting police departments, I don't think their research comes with as much perceived prestige. CJ is not yet taken seriously as an academic field of study and is overshadowed by sociology.

    In the proseminar course I took at the beginning of my PhD program, we read a couple of interesting articles about the history of CJ. It was called a "cop shop" because colleges would quickly start these programs for access to federal funding through LEEP, but didn't really care about academic rigor. The school I used to teach at put their lowest performing students on the proficiency exam in the CJ program. They kept telling us to do more hands-on stuff because that's how they advertised the program, but that's not what CJ programs are about, and they wouldn't buy us any equipment. They just threw up the program to attract all of the wannabe cops and crime scene investigators. CJ programs are cheap to throw together and are bringing in an increasing number of students who watch all of these CSI and law shows.

    I don't advise that anyone study CJ unless they have an academic interest in it. While I think police officers should be better educated, they can get the same value from many social science programs. I've heard many police officers advise people not to study CJ because many people either can't get into a police department or will burn out quickly. Then, you will have to figure out what you're going to do with your CJ degree afterward. About half of my students thought they needed an associate's in CJ to become a police officer. This is quite common. People mistakenly point to CJ as the more practical degree when comparing it to psychology and sociology, but the truth is that CJ often competes with them for the same types of jobs and overall has less utility than those degrees. Rarely do police departments require a degree, and when they do, they will accept any degree 99% of the time. For probation and parole jobs, CJ is not the only acceptable degree. I almost always see social work, psychology, sociology, and other closely related subjects listed along with it.
     
  7. mattbrent

    mattbrent Well-Known Member

    Our Criminal Justice professor actually has a law degree, not a PhD or MA in Criminal Justice. I have not done extensive research by any means, but I also know of other institutions which have JD's teaching Criminal Justice courses. Though there may not be many with a PhD in Criminal Justice, I'm fairly certain there are more than enough individuals with a JD. Since it's not my field, I don't know how effective a JD would be versus a PhD, though.

    -Matt
     
  8. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    Two professors in my program have JDs, but they've been teaching for decades. A JD is no longer considered the equivalent of a PhD in most criminal justice programs.
     
  9. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Why would a degree in cj require one to be a police officer? That would be like a history degree requiring one to be a history teacher. There's always other options, like unemployment or minimum wage jobs.
     

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