Marine curious about advanced degree

juillet
Thu, 31 Oct 2013 19:09:58 +0000

I understand what has been said; however, at the end of the day, I am not getting a “prestigeous” degree, if that makes any sense. I simply want a criminal justice degree to be more competitive when I transition to a state or federal law enforcement agency. From what I have been told, police and federal agencies “don’t give a rat’s ass” as to where a degree came from, only that you have one. And really, like I said, Liberty’s tuition is as much as my military Tuition Assistance, so no out of pocket expenses. But, I was just wanting to make sure that, like said earlier, if I do get a degree from Liberty, it does more good than bad. On a side note, UMUC does not offer a Master’s in criminal justice and their tuition is $458 a credit hour; way over the amount paid by Tuition Assistance.

I don’t think it’s true that police and federal agencies don’t give a rat’s ass as to where you go. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure that for federal agencies, at least, appointments are made competitively and having a well-reputed degree means a lot (although your veterans benefits may outweigh the effects of a negatively-received degree).

To answer your questions directly:

-I wouldn’t say that Liberty would add any “oomph” to your degree.
-Some people at some agencies will look down on you with a Liberty degree. It depends on the person. Liberty doesn’t have a reputation as a rigorous institution.
-Liberty is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia, and specifically Jerry Falwell’s church (and now Jerry Falwell, Jr.'s church). Falwell was the president when alive and now his son is the president, and so the university pretty much follows the Falwell church’s religious beliefs and teachings. In many areas of teaching, they go against established science in the field - most notably in biology, as they teach young Earth creationism in addition to evolution in their classrooms and teach that creationism is a better explanation for life on Earth than evolution. They also revoked all official recognition from all political clubs on campus because they wanted to revoke recognition from the Democratic Club (claiming that the party’s platform was incompatible with their brand of Christianity), but couldn’t see a way to do that alone without harming their reputation, so they simply removed all recognition from any political club.

So that’s how religious they are. How much that will affect your own degree is hard to tell. They say that the goal of the program is “to train present and future leaders in the field of criminal justice who will bring a solid Christian worldview to the development and execution of criminal justice policy, and the leadership and management of criminal justice organizations.” The course plan (http://www.liberty.edu/media/1270/MS-Criminal-Justice-Public-Administration-2013.pdf) seems to have pretty normal criminal justice classes, so the religious bent of those courses isn’t immediately apparent.

I would recommend that you look at profiles of people who do what you want to do (you can find them on LinkedIn) and see what kinds of schools they come from. Do they all come from prestigious places, state flagships, directional states, a mix? You may want to set up some informational interviews with people who are already in the job that you want. Ask them what they think of your plan and whether they would hire, or think their boss would hire, someone with a Liberty degree.