I am having a TON of trouble finding a major. My plan is to start of in local ( fairly big city ) law enforcement with the eventual goal of joining a federal law enforcement agency. Just taking in consideration law enforcement careers in general I’ve been told alot recently whatever I do don’t get a degree in criminal justice or criminology which really makes no since to me. I know it’s been on here because I’ve read it but I’ve never seen it explained.
Also what degree would you then recommend. ( if you say accounting or finance or similar I would be setting myself up for failure with something relying that heavily on math )
Criminal justice majors have more trouble finding jobs and can only do law enforcement. The student’sacademic level is lower so your peers may not be as strong and stimulating.
Criminology is an entirely different field and it typically requires a graduate degree.
Forensic science is another field you can look into -it’s basically chemistry applied to law enforcement.
Why don’t you ask the hr division at your local law enforcement agency what types of majors their hires in the past 5years had?
Essentially though the answer would be: choose any major where you can be among the best and pursue internships and job shadowing aggressively. A strong career center rating will matter more than your major. Skills such as critical foreign language or statistics will be a plus.
At the school I am attending the major is called is criminal justice / criminology and what you’ve said makes since because I have seen them separate but I guess that at this school it is a mixture of both?
Exactly what do you want to be DOING in law enforcement? (At the fbijobs.gov site I see a surprising array of occupational specialties the FBI seeks to have.)
Eventual goal of investigative work.
But the FBI isn’t the only federal law enforcement agency.
It’s certainly not true that criminal justice majors can “only” do law enforcement (any more than it is that computer science majors can “only” work in software engineering or English majors can “only” do writing-related jobs). I’m not sure whether criminal justice majors have more trouble finding jobs; I haven’t seen any large-scale studies supporting it (criminal justice unemployment rates are [not that much higher than rates for majors like engineering, computer science and accounting](Box), but that doesn’t mean that they do or don’t take longer to find a position than majors in those fields).
However, I’ve checked out the websites for federal law enforcement agencies recently and both the FBI and CIA recommend against majoring in criminal justice. It appears that the major is too popular and possibly too general for their purposes. They do actually need a lot of accoutants and people in finance. The CIA is very vague:
CIA employees represent a wide variety of disciplines from an even broader mix of academic backgrounds and experience. Therefore, we don’t recommend one academic track over another in general.
The Agency’s personnel requirements change from month to month as positions are filled and others become available. Our best advice to you is to do your very best and strive for good grades. Fluency in a foreign language is a good addition. Above all, understand that your choices and behaviors now are a reflection of your personal integrity, character and patriotism.
The FBI is more specific:
The FBI is currently seeking skills and degrees in: hard sciences, such as biology, chemistry, physics, etc.; all engineering fields; computer sciences; information systems; international studies; business, finance, and accounting; and military intelligence. Those with political science, criminal justice, and psychology degrees must have another critical skill in order to be more competitive (for example, military intelligence background, a graduate degree, or a special skill)…If you have a foreign language skill, the critical languages we seek are: Arabic (all dialects), Chinese, Korean, Russian, Hebrew, Swahili, Albanian, Indonesian, Pashto, Punjabi, and Vietnamese. Spanish is also considered a critical foreign language. However, you would have to speak at a high level of proficiency (3+ or higher) in order to be considered for further testing. Occasionally, the work experience requirement can be waived if you speak a critical language and show proficiency.
As you can see, the FBI requires (and the CIA prefers) work experience, so the best thing you can probably do is get some military and/or civilian law enforcement experience for a couple of years, and possibly a graduate degree, and/or learn a critical foreign language to a certain level of proficiency. Social science majors - particularly political science, CJ, and psychology - will put you at a disadvantage.
There are [lots of other federal agencies that do or are involved in law enforcement](Federal law enforcement in the United States - Wikipedia), with different needs and requirements of course. My guess is that most of them will prefer more experienced candidates, candidates with graduate degrees, candidates with harder-to-recruit majors like STEM fields and business, and candidates with critical foreign language training.