Best employment opportunities - Natural Science Vs Social Science degree

[ryoder]

Police officers in Tampa do not require a college degree but an associates in anything can serve as a minimum entrance requirement for those with no experience.
Police Officer

SALARY RANGE:

(P01) $22.30 - $36.23 an hour $46,384.00 - $75,358.40 a year
BENEFITS:

40-hour work week; annual and sick leave; paid holidays; medical and life insurance. State of Florida Incentive Plan, maximum available $1,560 per year.


QUALIFICATIONS - EDUCATION/WORK EXPERIENCE:

- Possession of an Associate’s Degree or completion of 2 years of college coursework from an accredited college or university (60-semester or 90-quarter hours);- OR-

- High-school diploma and three (3) years of prior law enforcement or corrections experience at a department of medium-to-large size; - OR -

- High-school diploma and three (3) years of full-time, active military experience; - OR -

- High-school diploma and five (5) years of experience as a member of the Tampa Police Department Reserve Force; - OR -

[dcan]

This just seems psychotic to me. Here's a few degrees that would apparently "serve as a minimum entrance requirement for those with no experience" in police work.

- Horticulture
- Agriculture
- Fashion Design
- Music
- Art / Art History / Fine Arts
- Theater
- Literature
- Animal Science
- Nutrition (then again, have you seen some cops?)

(source: most useless degrees)

So someone who double-majored in fashion and theater is the equivalent of someone with "experience" as a police officer? Again, this is saying "pay $30,000+ just for the right to send your resume." Talk about creating an artificial barrier of entry and limiting social mobility. And I don't mean this as solely directed against the police force, but against most other fields that have arbitrary "any degree" requirements. I can understand looking for degrees in certain fields, even broad ones (e.g. a science, psychology, or sociology-related degree) but not "any degree."

I'll never understand this. Our kids will have to work twice as hard to pay off the crushing debts they were forced to incur for the sole privilege of being able to work to pay off the debt. It's insane.

And people will stand around shocked (shocked!) when we have a catastrophic education bubble collapse.

[dcan]

The San Antonio Police Department is one of the few large departments in Texas that does not require at least an associates degree or 60 credits. I can tell you that it would help if they did have this requirement because it would raise the intelligence standards. I've come across a lot of cops who lack critical thinking skills and can't even correctly remember the laws they have to enforce on a regular basis. Many of them wouldn't even be able to correctly interpret the laws if you were to put them in front of them. The small police departments normally do not have their own academies so they hire people who paid their own way through a private or community college academy. An instructor at the San Antonio College Law Enforcement Academy said that many of his students read at the 3rd grade level and they have to work extra hard to teach these cadets basic reading and writing skills just so they can get through the coursework.

This is horribly depressing.

[sanantone]

Most people can obtain an associates degree at a community college. I know tuition rates vary by state and county, but you generally do not have to spend anywhere near $30k for an associates degree. An associates at any of the Bexar County community colleges will only cost you $4,000 not including books. Since SAPD does not require anything above a high school diploma, it gives education incentive pay for degrees. Most of the other large police departments in Texas give incentive pay for any degree above an associates.

Yes, my post was depressing; but, unfortunately, it's the truth. Over half of the students that attend community college in San Antonio need remediation. These students shouldn't have graduated from high school in the first place. Several years ago, I applied to become a Bexar County Sheriff's detention officer, which is the prerequisite to becoming a sheriff's deputy. I dropped out of the hiring process because I didn't want to get stuck at the jail for years during their hiring freeze. Anyway, only a high school diploma was required and we had to take a written test. Since the test covered math and language skills at the middle school level, I was surprised to see that half of the class failed.

I'm sure requiring an associates degree wasn't always the case for most large police departments. There has to be some kind of reasoning behind it. My guess is that they got fed up with cadets struggling with the curriculum even though they were able to pass the written test. Maybe the test needs to be harder, but they have probably had success with requiring some post-secondary education. Even if the person did get a degree in something completely unrelated to law enforcement, at least there's a good chance the person can read, write, and reason enough to be a cop.

[dcan]

You are lucky. I just looked up total cost at the CC nearby and it's $16,000 a year. That's a state school. Coincidentally that junky little good-for-nothing CC with a horrible reputation for turning out people who can't do basic work costs the same as the annual cost at USM where my daughter wants to go! My wife was considering moving into the occupational therapy arena as an OT assistant. The only CC in the state (a state school) certified to grant an AS degree in occupational therapy charges almost $60,000 for it. For an associate's degree!! In fact it wasn't until I started reading on this board that I discovered the state I've been a resident of all my life is brutally extorting its own citizens at the CC level.

I wrote in another thread about my wife teaching GED classes here about ten years ago. It's similarly horrible. What kills me about what you are saying is it simply shows how screwed up our education system is. The system is graduating people who can't read, so the answer isn't to hold the education system accountable, it's to require the kids who can't read to pay thousands of dollars they may not have to learn how to read. I'm sure to someone who can't read past junior high level $4,000 may as well be $30,000.

BTW I'm not "blaming the system" without holding the people accountable, but "the system" is the topic under discussion and is a major part of the problem.

[sanantone]

I agree. While I tend not to blame teachers for students not learning how to read, write, and do basic math; I blame them for passing them onto the next grade level. The reason why I don't blame the teachers is because, while I came out of my high school with the ability to pass basic written tests for employment, some of my friends did not. Basically, these friends did not care about learning and thought it was nerdy to receive good grades. Some students just refuse to learn and they deserve to fail.

At the non-profit community colleges and for-profit universities I attended, if I were an instructor, I would have failed over 75% of my classmates. Not only could they not write on at least the 5th grade level, but they also did not answer the discussion questions because they either could not comprehend the questions or they could not comprehend the readings. The best example of this I can think of was when we were supposed to write a rebuttal to the argument that juveniles should not be used as informants. All but 3 of the 20 or so students wrote a posting that was in agreement with the argument. They didn't know the definition of the word "rebuttal." The problem at the CCs was that most of the social science courses I took did not require English I or higher as a prerequisite. The problem at some of the for-profits is that the instructors are pressured into passing students who shouldn't.