Is a criminology degree worthwhile?

[Luciansmum6]

Personally I think a criminology degree is unlikely to ever be used and there’s probably far more graduates than jobs because it seems to be the in thing..

My friend's daughter had always wanted to join the police force and was successful after she graduated with a criminology degree.

I guess it depends whether you think education for the sake of learning more is valuable or only if it leads to a specific job.

It has become an extremely popular subject for students to choose to study. Not really sure why tbh.

It develops the same generic graduate level skills as any other not strictly vocational degree.
I appreciate hardly any graduates will become ‘criminologists’ but many will work in the wider criminal justice sector - police, prisons, probation, courts etc. Also many work for charities that focus on youth diversion, offender rehabilitation or drug rehabilitation. That’s before you start on the jobs that just require you to have a degree, not a specific degree.
(Yes I’m an academic, but no, not in criminology …)

It's like any other social science degree.

What @igivein says.
Non-vocational degrees are valuable. Education is valuable. There are skills you learn doing a degree that are useful even if you work in a totally different field, but it’s irrelevant really. Education is an absolute good.

Well you'd make a fantastic podcaster!
Seriously though, there are a huge range of careers that could open up to you with perhaps a masters following on from the degree. Perhaps forensics? Would it be a British criminology degree or international?

I did a degree in archaeology and I absolutely loved it. I am no longer an archaeologist but I don't regret it as the skills it taught me in terms of analytical thinking, formation of hypothesis, scientific reasoning and much more, were invaluable life skills to transfer onto other careers. And I am shit hot at digging holes.

It’s become very popular of late it seems and whilst uni can teach you valuable, education type skills IMO, it absolutely can’t prepare you for half the jobs people end up in or think they’ll be more successful in from doing I.e. being a PC or a prison officer. Life experience is so much more valuable.

Not from the OU

Why?

I studied criminology at the university of Northampton and found the degree has very bad job prospects and it is very hard to find a job related to this degree. With a student loan to pay back I regret doing this degree.

No.

My friend did it and is the Head of something at the department of somewhere in the government.
Another person I know did it and is Fraud Manager for Natwest. I'd argue its potentially more useful than a Sociology degree as it's more targeted - you could go into Prisons and Probation, Police, related areas like drugs and alcohol treatment, and cybersecurity is a growing area.

Statistics would also be a a good degree for those areas, or doing a research masters.

I suppose the issue now is more that everyone has degrees / we are a highly educated population, so then you needed a masters to stand out. That's not really as affordable now. I left uni with 10k of debt - would I see a 50k degree now as worth it? Given that the highest I've ever earned in my life is 43k p/a. No probably not. I do understand that it's a tax - but I think it would have made me want to choose a different degree.

For me. im intrested in different aspects but the same could be said about various degrees, that yes some could be useful and others its the skills you use and transfer etc

It's about as worthwhile as many degrees, to be fair. It's an interesting one in that some unis offer it as a BA (taking more of a historical/sociological approach) and others as a BSc. But essentially it's a social science. My DS is in his third year studying it and has really enjoyed his degree. It's a fascinating topic to study.

Yes, it's popular (a bit like psychology A level has become popular) and yes, many criminology students will not end up working in a criminology related field. But isn't that true of so many non-vocational or non STEM degrees? Many English literature/history/geography/arts students will not get a job that's anything to do with English literature or history or geography or the arts. And to be fair there will also be loads of STEM students who won't necessarily end up working in the degree subject field. (My DH has a chemistry degree, but has he ever worked in anything related to chemistry? No, he has not).

But all undergraduates are learning valuable transferable skills regardless of what they're actually studying.