A major concern about mandatory college education for police is its potential effect on recruitment, particularly from minority and low-income communities. This concern is particularly important now, since police departments are increasingly emphasizing community-based policing, which requires officers to develop a personal rapport with the communities in which they serve. Departments thus recognize the importance of recruiting officers with a first-hand understanding of minority and low-income communities. However, not all police administrators have found mandatory college education to be a barrier to diversity in police departments. Theron Bowman, chief of police in Arlington, Texas, argued that his department's minority recruitment has continued to be robust even with an education requirement.
A potential advantage to police education cited by advocates is that seeking recruits with college educations will raise the prestige of the profession, which will in turn attract more qualified candidates. This advantage, however, may come at a price: More educated officers may require higher salaries, which would either raise expenditures or put pressure on cash-strapped departments to hire less-educated candidates, who can be paid less.
While some have argued that college-educated police officers are better at interpersonal communication and complex problem solving, others have argued that they tend to get bored easily on the job. Another concern is that officers with more formal education than their peers may expect better assignments and faster promotions because of their education and may become disillusioned when their expectations are not met.
An argument frequently made for police education is that college-educated officers will have better problem-solving and judgment skills and a better ability to recognize and avoid ethical pitfalls and interpersonal conflicts. However, in his 2007 dissertation on police conduct and education, Steven Gerding finds no correlation between police misconduct and level of education in the large department he studied: Officers with college educations were no less likely to engage in misconduct than those without.