University degree required to join the police

University degree required to join the police

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Discussion

Eclassy

Original Poster:

1,201 posts

121 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34805856

I think it is a fantastic idea. It wont completely stop morons and illiterates from joining but it will weed out a lot of them.

A few examples of how a degree will help:

In university you are exposed to interacting and working with people from all backgrounds so officers with degrees are more likely to be prejudiced.

Officers will be able to read and write. If the officer who obtained a warrant to raid my house could read and maybe do a little bit of critical thinking, he would have realised it was the wrong place. When I was attacked in my much publicised video and went to give a statement, the officer's writing was not only terrible, it was littered with spelling mistakes. I remember telling him the assailant 'alighted' from his vehicle and he asked me what that meant.

Officers with a degree will also be able to better interprete the law and as such do no more than they are empowered to do. This should lead to a reduction in unlawfull arrests.



gemini

11,352 posts

263 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
Utter bks!

zarjaz1991

3,471 posts

122 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
I'm going to assume this post isn't an ironic piss-take.

Eclassy said:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34805856

I think it is a fantastic idea. It wont completely stop morons and illiterates from joining but it will weed out a lot of them.
So anyone without a degree is a moron and an illiterate?

Eclassy said:
In university you are exposed to interacting and working with people from all backgrounds so officers with degrees are more likely to be prejudiced.
Assuming you mean "less likely to be prejudiced":
I've not been to university, yet I have been "exposed to interacting and working with people from all backgrounds". Why do you think you need to go to university to experience this.

Eclassy said:
Officers will be able to read and write. If the officer who obtained a warrant to raid my house could read and maybe do a little bit of critical thinking, he would have realised it was the wrong place. When I was attacked in my much publicised video and went to give a statement, the officer's writing was not only terrible, it was littered with spelling mistakes. I remember telling him the assailant 'alighted' from his vehicle and he asked me what that meant.
So you think people go to university in order to learn how to read and write? I didn't go to university. How did I manage it?



johnfm

13,668 posts

249 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
Popcorn.
This'll be good.

anonymous-user

53 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
gemini said:
Utter bks!
Spot on yes
Pointless degrees for police, nursing and social workers just putting people into debt for 'mediocre' average run of the mill jobs.
A degree will not give any common sense required in the above jobs.

Pete317

1,430 posts

221 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
There have been, and still are, many well-educated tyrants

bitchstewie

50,813 posts

209 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
I've always thought that degrees are indicators of intelligence rather than necessarily being a demonstrator of common sense, being open minded, having people skills, all the other things that you need to do that kind of job IMO.

I've no doubt it would be useful in some areas of Police work, but without wishing to "dumb down" what the average Police Officer does, I've never thought of it as something that necessitated a degree - Traffic Police for example, how would a degree in Business Studies or Sociology be of a benefit?

deltashad

6,731 posts

196 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
Load of crap, poo, bum.

Uni, non-uni in my industry makes no difference, old fashioned beliefs uni's breed more intelligent people.
From a trainee to management in oil and gas it makes no sodding difference what education you had.
There are plenty of uni educated, what I would call, uneducated idiots who think they know how to run things and only run the company down.

Poo bum

Pete317

1,430 posts

221 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
bhstewie said:
Traffic Police for example, how would a degree in Business Studies or Sociology be of a benefit?
They would probably soon start feeling that their job is beneath them, and leave.


Dr Jekyll

23,820 posts

260 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
bhstewie said:
I've always thought that degrees are indicators of intelligence rather than necessarily being a demonstrator of common sense, being open minded, having people skills, all the other things that you need to do that kind of job IMO.

I've no doubt it would be useful in some areas of Police work, but without wishing to "dumb down" what the average Police Officer does, I've never thought of it as something that necessitated a degree - Traffic Police for example, how would a degree in Business Studies or Sociology be of a benefit?
There was a documentary about met police trainees a few years back. One of the intake had a degree and was doing OK, but got really depressed because he had assumed he was bound to be the star pupil (rightly or wrongly he assumed the rest of the intake didn't have degrees).It had to be explained to him that Hendon police college wasn't a university so he wasn't expected to take the place by storm just because he had a degree.

I think a lot of new graduates assume their contemporaries who didn't go to university have been stuck in some kind of stasis for the last three years and can't possibly have learnt anything or acquired useful experience.

Denis O

2,141 posts

242 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
Degrees are so dumbed down from what they were 30 years ago I guess it would now be the equivalent of a CSE grade 6.

eldar

21,614 posts

195 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
Eclassy said:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34805856

I think it is a fantastic idea. It wont completely stop morons and illiterates from joining but it will weed out a lot of them.

A few examples of how a degree will help:

In university you are exposed to interacting and working with people from all backgrounds so officers with degrees are more likely to be prejudiced.

Officers will be able to read and write. If the officer who obtained a warrant to raid my house could read and maybe do a little bit of critical thinking, he would have realised it was the wrong place. When I was attacked in my much publicised video and went to give a statement, the officer's writing was not only terrible, it was littered with spelling mistakes. I remember telling him the assailant 'alighted' from his vehicle and he asked me what that meant.

Officers with a degree will also be able to better interprete the law and as such do no more than they are empowered to do. This should lead to a reduction in unlawfull arrests.
interprete? unlawfull?

0000

13,812 posts

190 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
zarjaz1991 said:
Eclassy said:
I think it is a fantastic idea. It wont completely stop morons and illiterates from joining but it will weed out a lot of them.
So anyone without a degree is a moron and an illiterate?
...

zarjaz1991 said:
I've not been to university
Shocker.

I don't think it's a good idea simply because I can't see a degree is required to do Police work. A reasonable standard of entrance test should be adequate to weed out illiterates. This is only considered an option as a result of the general dumbing down of university places.

Fish

3,975 posts

281 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
gemini said:
Utter bks!
Agree...

There are a lot of degrees now which are useless and a lot of jobs which definitely don't need degrees...

How about a Police apprenticeship so people can shadow and help officers...then work towards joining?

littlebasher

3,767 posts

170 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
I thought the recruitment process already weeded out most of the less desirable candidates?

When i went through the recruitment process back in the late 90's, the initial screening process consisted of around 100 people. By the time of the fitness test in the late afternoon there was only 8 of us left.

And i got the impression a good proportion of the candidates were discarded based on their appearance alone. Honestly, who turns up for something like that dressed like a goth or wearing shorts and t shirts?.....as about 20 of them did!

DonkeyApple

54,934 posts

168 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
University degrees are pretty worthless today. They certainly do not ensure that a potential employee is either literate or intelligent.

The Police force is such an important organisation that it must be allowed to employ on merit and never restrict itself to a small pool of distinct people who may or may not be at all intelligent or educated.

What is clear though, is that for this sort of idea to be mooted then some people believe that the Police have been hiring some very thick people?

Catagorically, the Police force should have its own entrance exam that is strict enough to weed out those without the suitable mental capacity to be a police officer but cutting corners and just relying on university degrees to do the same job is not a workable solution.

Just ask any traditional employer of graduates what they have noticed in the last decade or so among their average applicants and it will become blatantly obvious that this is a daft idea.

In addition, restricting an organisation to a single education pool and therefor in many regards, mindset is also not a good long term strategy. We've seen it in the City where the 'MBA' has become the defacto requirement for a front office position. And low and behold an entire operation of people all programmed to think and act the same has not transpired to be beneficial. You must always have a mix.

gowmonster

2,471 posts

166 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
would only make sense it it were law degrees, and then they would probably just become lawyers.

hajaba123

1,302 posts

174 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
OP, do you live your whole life on this bitter crusade or do you sometimes chill out and enjoy it?

sparkythecat

7,898 posts

254 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
Fish said:
How about a Police apprenticeship so people can shadow and help officers...then work towards joining?
I think that's what the Specials were for.

Police forces used to recruit people and then send them to training schools for 3 months full time training. This is very expensive. Given the drop out rates during both this, and the first two years of probationary service, involving further training, it was also wasteful.

Rather than burden the police forces with this cost, why not, in common with most other professions, get the would be recruits, to go and pay for their own training at a university?

Edited by sparkythecat on Saturday 14th November 10:43

baldy1926

2,136 posts

199 months

Saturday 14th November 2015
quotequote all
My mother is 82 when she heard this she said,'why, you must need people skills and common sense more than anything'
Spot on i believe