In the 2012 rankings of top graduate school programs, "U.S. News and World Report" called the graduate criminology program at the University of Maryland at College Park the best in the nation. The top 10 also included the University at Albany, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Missouri at St. Louis, Pennsylvania State University, the University of California at Irvine, Florida State University, Michigan State University, Rutgers, and CUNY at John Jay College. The rankings were based solely on the results of peer assessment surveys, according to the magazine website. The surveys asked for rankings on the academic quality of the program.
At the University of Maryland’s top-ranked Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, there are three master’s degree programs of study: traditional, professional and joint. The traditional program involves a criminal justice curriculum and a thesis. The professional program is designed to train midcareer and precareer students and has three areas of specialization: policing, courts and corrections. The joint Master of Arts and Juris Doctor degree is offered in cooperation with the School of Law at the Baltimore campus. The California State University at Long Beach's graduate degree program takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on the fields of psychology and political science as well as criminology and law. At John Jay College the program covers research methods, causes of crime and analyses of the police, courts and correctional system. This program is for students already employed in the criminal justice system as well as those hoping to enter the profession.
Criminal justice degrees typically focus on one of four areas: forensics, homeland security, law enforcement or public safety. With a forensics education, students learn to collect, analyze and explain physical evidence from a crime scene. Some students learn a specialty, such as firearms or DNA analysis. Homeland security includes the broader study of emergency management and can include international relations, given the existence of both internal and overseas threats. Law enforcement students typically study the specifics of police work, from corrections to investigations. Coursework often focuses on criminological research and analysis. For students who already work in the criminal justice field, coursework can often be immediately applied. As an example, students learning how to analyze crime data can be apply their studies to the agency they work for to prioritize crime prevention objectives and evaluate the impact of an agency's ability to reduce crime.
There are opportunities for career growth for graduates of criminal justice advanced degrees. Careers for criminal justice graduates include police, security and corrections officers, paralegals and legal assistants,; detectives and criminal investigators and federal law enforcement agents. The salary range for these careers is wide – up to $100,000 for various federal agents. The national average salary for a police detective, according to Salary.com, is $41,500.