Pursue a homeland security major. It's an obvious choice. You'll be educated in such subjects as psychology, engineering, political science, emergency preparedness and national security. Schools across the nation offer various degrees in homeland security: associate programs, bachelor's programs and master's programs. Although not every university offers this degree program, the popularity of the field is pushing more schools to add homeland security studies to their curricula.
If you study political science, then you'll learn about how governments are formed and how they function, and you'll learn about historic leaders and how the governed react to different forms of government. A background in political science can be useful in a homeland security career, because you'll become knowledgeable about world governments, which helps in analyzing and predicting the behavior of other nations.
Emergency management graduates are trained to handle any type of emergency situation that may strike -- be it natural disaster, accident, civil unrest or threat of war. Such emergency response professionals might be in charge of evacuations, distribution of emergency supplies and medical care. A Master of Emergency Management teaches you critical disaster relief and crisis management techniques. Doctoral emergency management degrees usually require courses about disaster planning and hazard mitigation.
Information assurance graduates protect computers from the threat of worms, viruses and hackers. A Master of Science in information assurance degree program teaches you how to protect sensitive and private data, such as information on government computers, as well as computer network design and infrastructure, risk management and system auditing and intrusion detection and control.
According to ULinks.com, a criminology degree helps students to study the criminal justice system, study data and draw conclusions about a particular crime, analyze theories about crime for various investigations, suggest ways to reduce the influences of criminals on society, develop scientific methods for detecting and resolving crimes, study clues and fingerprints and work with crime labs to identify criminals. Criminologists are necessary in the field of homeland security, because homeland security's No. 1 goal is to protect the people of the country.