Bound for degrees

Some police officers relish the opportunity for high academic achievement. But can such a challenge – with its heavy demands on their time and finances – overwhelm them?

The idea of a police officer leaving university with some of those impressive-sounding letters after his or her name probably bemuses some. But why should it? A tertiary qualification could give ambitious young cops the edge in climbing the police promotional ladder; or it could even serve as a ticket into a lucrative private-sector job.

In recent years, many SA police have earned law degrees, left SAPOL, and ventured into private practice. Others have secured equally worthy credentials and remained in policing.

But for full-time, shift-working cops, the pursuit of a degree in any field comes with a not-so-appealing list of hardships.

First among the obvious is the burdensome combination of a full-time police career and a demanding academic life. Most officers, of course, have the necessary skill to manage their time well. But even under a regime of expertly-timed work and study, life as both a police officer and a university student can still be torturous.

Police officers with young families face not only the high cost of course fees, but also less of the limited time that shiftwork allows them with their children. And, single or married, all cops who study endure the impact of sheer mental fatigue, especially after days on the beat and nights in the books – or vice versa.

Nonetheless, police officers continue to line up for university places. And, where they once sought to pursue law almost exclusively, they now seek a far broader range of courses.

Paul Blackmore, 37
Detective Senior Constable Holden Hill CIB
Studying law at Flinders University

With more than two thirds of his law degree complete, Holden Hill detective, Paul Blackmore “cannot wait for it to be over”. To each semester of his 162-unit course, he has over the past five years taken an all-study-and-no-play approach.

The combination of that study with his detective work has only ever allowed him two short intrastate holidays with his wife and two young children. As well, he continues to sacrifice most opportunities to socialize, and only ever “kicks back” briefly after final exams.

Depending on the number of subjects Blackmore takes per semester, he might have to front up for as many as nine lectures/tutorials per week. Study leave from SAPOL helps, but if a serious armed robbery or attempted murder suddenly requires his detective skills, he must simply miss his scheduled lecture or tutorial.

“On the odd occasion, you might get an extra long shift due to overtime,” he says, “which makes you tired the next day for your study. That, effectively, puts you behind the eight-ball.”

To make up for the sessions he misses, Blackmore has to spend time to secure lecture notes from fellow students.

During a typical semester, he studies at home for up to 12 hours per week. But in the last days before his end-of-semester exams, his study time increases to as much as eight hours per day.

With what he calls the “external demands” of shiftwork and family life, he cannot live by a regimented study regime.

“It’s fragmented,” he explains, “more of a ‘when-you-can’ situation than a regimented regime. And, because I have to do it when I can, that normally means after 9pm, when the kids go to bed.

“When that’s the case, you’re sometimes too tired to study, or you’re reading and it’s not sinking in. You’re basically wasting your time.

“Just the fact that you’re a full-time shift-worker with kids, and studying part-time, makes life generally more difficult than you would like.”

In the lead-up to his exams, Blackmore feels “mentally drained” and suffers from poor sleep. “That (lead-up time) is when you’re under the most pressure to perform,” he says. “It’s just like going out to play in a football grand final: you’re nervous, on-edge and apprehensive.”

The pursuit of his law degree also comes with a hefty financial burden. Blackmore has to pay around $700 for each three-unit subject he takes. A six-unit subject costs him around $1,000.

His current semester – in which he has taken three subjects – will cost him about $2,700. By the time he completes his degree, he expects to have paid out $25,000.

Blackmore harbours no regret about taking on study for a law degree: he always expected to face a tough journey. Nonetheless, his ever-present list of hardships has sometimes left him to wrestle with the temptation to quit the course.

When he started, in 1999, he made a vow never, through his study, to deprive his children of his time. “But,” he says, “while you try your best to accommodate that side of things, there are times when they want to go to the park or kick the ball around, and you just can’t.

“At those times, you just feel like the easy option is to throw it all in. Then, all you’ve got to worry about is work.”

But Blackmore has always turned away from the quit option. He sees that to complete his degree will be “a huge accomplishment”, and he does not intend, through quitting, to waste the thousands of dollars he has so far paid out.

With his degree – which he hopes to have earned by 2005 – Blackmore hopes he might enhance his promotional opportunities within SAPOL. But he recognizes that, for him, other options lie outside the police force.

“If I was to leave the police department,” he says, “there are only a few areas of law that interest me: family law and corporate law.

“But, I have this dream: one day, down the track, I’d like to go to work on the International Criminal Court in The Hague, in the Netherlands.”

Belinda Laird, 26
Constable Seconded to Christies Beach CIB (from patrols)
Studying psychology at the University of Adelaide

Completely drained just before she finished a semester last year, Belinda Laird was poised to drop out of her psychology course. For her, endless travel from Christies Beach to Adelaide University and back (72km), and constant interruptions to her police work, had added to the pressure of intense study.

Laird was not on campus on the day the urge to “throw it all in” struck her. But, today, she insists that, had she been there, she would have “put in a form to say ‘I’m out!’ “

However, like her colleague, Paul Blackmore, she resisted the urge to quit and, now, longs to finish this year the course she began in 1999.

New to policing, Laird suspended her studies for the six months she undertook recruit training in 2001. Just before she graduated from Fort Largs in August that year, she resumed her psychology course, which she describes as “no bludge”.

Now, aided by study leave, she attends lectures twice per week. To her study each week at home during semesters, she devotes only a few hours – until the time comes to immerse herself in assignments and exam preparations.

“Then, it’s just study all day,” she says, “any spare second you can get. That can go on for a week before an assignment’s due date.

“Exams are not quite as bad, because you don’t have anything to hand up. But you’re trying to remember everything you’ve learnt during the whole semester, so you can write it down during the space of three hours.”

Laird finds the combination of police work and study toughest when she works days. On a recent stretch of day shift – which begins at 7am – she had to spend evenings working until 2am on an assignment.

But, as tired as she might become on a run of day shifts, Laird struggles to sleep through the few hours available to her.

“On day shift,” she says, “you may end up doing overtime and get home just exhausted. You just haven’t got that energy to try to study. That’s partly why it ends up a rush at the end.

“If it wasn’t for study leave, and the people at Christies who let me go early and come to afternoon shift later, I wouldn’t be able to do it – not at all.”

And Laird admits that she feels a sense of abandonment of her colleagues whenever she leaves work for lectures. Thoughts that they might have to face serious jobs without her help, leaves her conscience suffering.

Beyond her ailing conscience and sheer mental fatigue, Laird often suffers physical ill health during semester breaks. “Come time for exams to be over and my body just freaks out,” she says.

“I just get a cold that I probably wouldn’t normally get, and just feel pretty flat for a while.”

Like most university students, Laird faces the high cost of participation. For each of her subjects, she has to buy one or two text books for $100-odd each. After she adds that expense to her HECS fees and compulsory student union payments, her debt per semester comes out to around $700. To her relief, Laird’s father pays her $500 HECS fees.

But the costs still come with a heavy impact. After she meets her expenses each semester, Laird finds she is up to $300 out-of-pocket for several pays, and unable to afford much of a social life.

Although Laird will soon emerge as a young, qualified psychologist, she has no plans to leave SAPOL. Her aim is to work her way into forensic psychology and operate as a police profiler.

But would she ever at least consider an offer to leave policing for a job in the private sector? “You’d have to think about it for a little while,” she says, “but there’s not a huge demand for forensic psychologists in the private sector, anyway.”

John De Candia, 32
General-duties patrol sergeant South Coast LSA
Studying management (justice) at the University of SA

John De Candia fronted up to one of his first lectures only to hear that up to 40 per cent of his class would fail. His lecturer made the point bluntly to him and his fellow students, who were about to take on the economics component of their management course.

“It was rather a positive first lecture,” says De Candia, with light-hearted sarcasm. “I found I really had to put the work in for that: I never did maths or economics at school.”

But, despite some tough subjects, university study was not too burdensome for De Candia when he took it on in 2001. He was then an Adelaide detective, who worked no night shift. And, the closeness of the University of SA City West Campus to his office meant he could attend lectures in work time, and had virtually no distance to travel.

Now a patrol sergeant at Christies Beach, De Candia can no longer take time off work to attend lectures. Any time he spends at university today is his own. These circumstances he politely describes as “most cumbersome”.

“You’ve got not only to take into account two hours for your tutorial,” he says, “but also virtually up to an hour on top of that to get home.”

So, for relief from his “cumbersome” regime, De Candia took his most recent semester’s subject externally. As a shift-worker, he found off-campus study “ideal”.

“Doing one externally has been fantastic,” he says. “The time (previously) spent travelling to and from university is spent on the Internet. Before or after afternoon shift, you can get on at any time and participate in uni without having to attend.”

But, amid his full life of police work, sport and fatherhood – since the birth of his first child last month – De Candia still has to spend up to 10 hours per week in the books. He finds no time in his life to “sit around and do nothing”.

Never, in his own judgement, a high-achieving student, he concedes that he has to work hard to absorb information. Like his colleagues, Blackmore and Laird, however, he rarely feels up to hours of study, or work on an assignment, after a long stretch of overtime.

“As exams get closer, the stress levels alter,” he says. “You’re lying in bed thinking about particular exam questions. Before any exam, you start to get anxious and wonder if you know enough.

“I’ve always managed to get by. It depends on whether you want to pass with high distinctions or just get through and get your degree. For most of my subjects I’ve got credits and a couple of distinctions.”

De Candia began his course in 2001 because, then, he and his wife enjoyed two incomes and had no children. Although he regarded the $500-odd he paid per subject as “quite substantial”, he was nonetheless able to accommodate the cost.

Now, he concedes that, with his expanded family and his wife no longer working, he will have to “reassess that (financial issue) next year”.

De Candia is “keen” to wind up his study, and aims to secure his degree by 2005. He looks forward to the satisfaction he suspects his achievement will bring, and private time to do as he pleases.

However employable he might soon seem to the private sector, no outfit is likely to entice him away from SAPOL. Like Blackmore, he hopes to use his degree to advance into police management.

But how would he respond to an attractive offer from the private sector? “You’d be silly if you didn’t consider it,” he says, “but I wouldn’t accept anything. While opportunities exist in SAPOL, I certainly want to pursue them.”