Maybe the sad economy will help, but I suspect that the effort to send everyone to college will not result in millennials choosing to become police officers or teachers. I also think the idea that a college education makes people more tolerant is elitist.
I think Ms. Goff’s reasoning is elitist. Sending the young man in the picture above to Stanford or the UW is not going to tame him.
The issue is not about pay. Entry level salaries in for teacher or cops are better than the pay for community college professors. If anything pay is better for cops than it is for teachers because teachers have very few options for progressive pay increases based on performance or new, non administrative activities. The kids you might want to choose to be cops or to be teachers have every reason not to join these professions. Smart, compassionate, kids with leadership qualities are encouraged to go into politics, the non-profit world, possibly business, or to become lawyers. They may even enter the clergy .. again at pay levels that may not be any better than the take home pay for a teacher or a cop.
Respect is a big deal. As Francis Fukuyama wrote, humans are motivated by a need for respect and power. One rich white guy remarked “Every time I’ve ever been pulled over I remind myself I’m dealing with a high school dropout with a gun.” Nate Silver, who is Jewish, was widely ridiculed after 
tweeting about being briefly locked up. The result was that Mr. Silver was ridiculed in the liberal media, but no one seemed to realize the implication of a rich guy controlled by underclass cops. Something similar is true of teachers. How many of us associate the world teacher with words like leader, thinker? Would you go to a high school history teacher with a question about Jefferson’s ideas about the Iroquois or invite him/her to dinner with your friends from Amazon?
This class difference is more worrisome to me than the race issue. Ferguson Missouri’s population is 67 percent black, but only 5.6 percent of the police force is. I suspect that the class difference is much less. Upper class whites and blacks are not likely to seek to dominate each other. Moreover, recent studies have found that racial bias does not influence whom officers shoot. Cops do a lot better than the lay public when asked to play a video game. The general public are more likely to shoot an unarmed suspect if he is black, but cops were less likely to do this. So training works, but even the best trained cop gets little respect.
Over at The Beast, Kelly Goff writes that, ,”data confirm a connection between education level and police behavior.” She asks “Why not require that cops have a college degree. After all, we require this for teachers why not for cops? Moreover, according to a 2006 report by USA Today, “In an analysis of disciplinary cases against Florida cops from 1997 to 2002, the International Association of Chiefs of Police found that officers with only high school educations were the subjects of 75% of all disciplinary actions. Officers with four-year degrees accounted for 11% of such actions.” This sort of study has a fallacy. Are these folks disciplinary problems as a result of not going to college or did the social issues that led them to be cops become the reason for bad discipline?
Kelly Goff continues “I want to be clear. I am not one of those people who believe that anyone with a college degree is by definition smarter than those without one. My grandmother lacks a high school diploma but is full of more wisdom, and more financial sense, than a lot of people I know. But I also believe that having too much of the same worldview is rarely a good thing. I would question the effectiveness of a police department that was comprised entirely of Ivy Leaguers in the same way I question the effectiveness of a police department comprised almost entirely of those who haven’t set foot on a college campus. Wouldn’t it make sense that an officer may react differently if he had actually been in the shoes of a college student before? ”
There may be an example for Ms. Goff from the Seattle Seahawks. Richard Sherman, a black kid who grew up in Compton, CA, is a superstar. Beyond his talents on the field, the man has a huge genius in presenting himself to the public. When he first became a star there was a shock … was Sherman an educated thug? Mr. Sherman’s Stanford education aside, he is a very bright man. OK, Richard’s mom is hugely proud of her son and he is extraordinary. What if he had become a cop?
Cops and teachers need respect! I do not mean the respect a cop earns by wearing a uniform or carrying a gun. Nor do I mean the respect that ninth graders show their Spanish teachers. I mean the sort of respect other countries pay people doing these important jobs. That respect is clearly missing in the public’s reaction to Ferguson.
Nor do I think a college diploma is any help. In a society where everyone has an IQ above average and everyone with an above average IQ is expected to earn a degree, a cop with a degree will still be a cop.