Degree Outcomes

What Can You Do With a Criminal Justice Degree?

Trevor Rupe, Contributor at Savo Media Group

Published November 10, 2026

What can you do with a criminal justice degree? Work in policing, corrections, probation, investigation or federal law enforcement, or go on to law school or a master’s. BLS lists a high school diploma as the entry education for four of the six occupations on this site that carry BLS pay and a bachelor’s degree for two, so the degree matters most where a posting names it, as every federal posting below does.

Which Jobs Does a Criminal Justice Degree Lead To?

The jobs the degree is built around are police work, corrections, probation, investigation and crime scene work, and BLS says what each one asks for. Four start at a high school diploma: police and sheriff's patrol officers, detectives and criminal investigators, correctional officers and jailers and private detectives and investigators. Two list a bachelor’s degree: probation officers and correctional treatment specialists and forensic science technicians. Detectives and criminal investigators had the highest median in May 2025, $93,790, on a high school diploma plus experience.

A job that lists a high school diploma is entered without a degree. Whether a degree helps an applicant stand out is each agency’s own call. The police officer page, the probation officer page and the crime scene investigator page set out how each is entered, and the salary guide carries pay by state.

Can You Get a Federal Law Enforcement Job With a Criminal Justice Degree?

Yes, and the postings below are where the degree itself counts. Each agency words the education line on its own page, and apart from the Marshals Service’s honors route, none of the lines below names a major.

The Marshals Service is the posting that names the major. Its “superior academic achievement” route asks for a bachelor’s degree “with major study in a field related to law enforcement,” and its list of related fields reads, “Criminal Justice, Criminology, Homeland Security, Forensic Science, Computer Forensics, Psychology, Sociology, Public Administration, Political Science, or Law.” Customs and Border Protection ties the same route to marks instead: “Superior Academic Achievement (SAA) is based on (1) class standing, (2) grade-point average (i.e., GPA of 3.0 or higher out of a possible 4.0), or (3) honor society membership.” So a criminal justice degree meets these education lines, and so do many other majors; what separates applicants is the rest of the posting, such as experience, fitness and the background check. The FBI agent page covers that posting in full.

What Can You Specialize in Within a Criminal Justice Degree?

A bachelor’s degree lets a student point the major at a job before graduating. 119 of the 305 profiled programs name concentrations, tracks or emphases on their pages, 350 in all. Grouped by what they are about, they fall into the themes below, and a program that names several counts under each:

The themes follow the jobs. The law enforcement ranking and the corrections ranking order the programs that lead into those fields, and the homeland security ranking does the same for that concentration. For forensic science technicians BLS names science fields, not criminal justice, so a forensic concentration sits beside that route and does not replace it, and the criminology comparison explains where the two majors split.

What Does a Criminal Justice Degree Program Add Beside Classes?

Many programs add field experience, and some add training that a department would otherwise provide. 170 of the 305 profiled programs quote a sentence that names an internship, and 85 name a capstone. The terms differ. Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio says, “Students are required to complete 400 internship hours.” American University in Washington, District of Columbia says, “Students can earn up to 12 credits from internships toward their degree,” and California State University-Fullerton in Fullerton, California says, “An internship is an elective and is not required for the criminal justice major”

28 profiles quote a sentence that ties police academy training to course credit. Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan says, “The GVSU Basic Police Academy is an annual 16-week intensive program that meets the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES) training requirements and prepares students for the Michigan Law Enforcement Licensing Examination.” Fitchburg State University in Fitchburg, Massachusetts says, “The Fitchburg State Academy is about 3-4 weeks shorter than a traditional academy because about one-quarter of the MPTC recruit curriculum is embedded in the undergraduate coursework.” Because these sentences are the ones the profiles kept, a school may offer more than its profile shows; ask any program you are weighing.

Delivery varies too: 217 of the 398 bachelor’s degrees the profiles name are offered online, as each school’s own page states, at 186 schools. The site ranks 745 bachelor’s programs, 187 of them online, and the online degree rankings score those on what a student from another state pays.

What Do Criminal Justice Degree Graduates Earn?

College Scorecard publishes the median earnings of a school’s criminal justice and corrections graduates (federal field 43.01) at each award level who received federal aid, four years after they finished. Of the 745 ranked bachelor’s programs, 586 have that four-year figure. The median of those schools’ own medians is $54,523, and the middle half of the schools fall between $49,826 and $59,017. The programs’ figures run from $21,931 to $106,465.

School by school, 37 schools report a four-year figure for both a ranked bachelor’s program and a ranked associate program, and the bachelor’s figure is the higher one at 32 of them, with a median gap of $5,831. The median ranked bachelor’s program charges a resident $14,184 a year in tuition and fees. These figures cover every program a school reports in that field, describe graduates together rather than one job, and do not show what the degree itself added. The associate route has its own post, and the master’s degree has one too.

Common Questions

Sources for the Figures in This Post

• Graduate earnings: U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard, field-of-study data for Criminal Justice and Corrections (CIP 43.01).
• Program names, credit counts, formats, entry requirements and published prices: each school's own program pages, read between October 7, 2026 and October 14, 2026.
• Wages: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.
• School pages quoted in this post, read on October 7, 2026: Grand Valley State University, Fitchburg State University, Bowling Green State University, California State University-Fullerton, American University and Elizabeth City State University.
• Federal postings, read on October 7, 2026: FBI special agent (USAJOBS posting), U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services officer, Deputy U.S. Marshal, Customs and Border Protection officer, Bureau of Prisons correctional officer (GL-05, USAJOBS posting) and DEA special agent.
• Entry education, pay and projections, read on October 7, 2026: BLS education and training assignments by occupation, with OEWS pay as of May 2025 and BLS projections for 2025 to 2035.