Law Enforcement Scholarships for Criminal Justice Majors

Criminal Justice students may study any one of a range of specialties within Law Enforcement, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Consequently, in terms of scholarship dough, the options are pretty endless.

Popular criminal justice degrees:

  • Forensic Science
  • Fire Science
  • Criminology
  • Security Management
  • Police Studies
  • Correctional Studies
  • International Criminal Studies
  • Forensic Computing
  • Forensic Mental Health
  • Criminal Justice
  • and there are many more

As you can imagine, the options for career pathways are diverse, so too are the scholarships and the sources for those scholarships.

Criminal Justice Scholarships from Schools

A primary go-to for criminal justice scholarships is your college or university. In fact, this step should be covered while you’re searching for schools that meet your needs. Most schools publicize their scholarships, general and subject-specific, so you shouldn’t need to dig too deeply or spend too much time. Examples of school scholarships for Criminal Justice majors include:

  • The City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice maintains its own proprietary bunker of well-endowed scholarships. The list includes undergraduate and graduate awards, cash gifts based on class level, academic merit, minority status, and financial need. Awards range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand.
  • Florida State University College of Criminology and Criminal Justice offers undergraduate and graduate students diverse scholarship and fellowship opportunities. Many of these awards are endowed by school alumni and come packaged with specific qualifiers: minority, undergraduate or graduate, academic merit, financial need, specific area of study, etc. There is a scholarship to fit almost any type of Criminal Justice major at FSU.

Criminal Justice Scholarships from Federal Government Agencies

A major task of the federal government is security and criminal justice of a magnitude hard to realize. To those goals are given untold man-hours of very specialized service in areas including science and technology, as well as law enforcement and criminal justice. Excellent and very competitive scholarships are funded by the following federal agencies. Particularly in-demand—skill-sets including: cryptology, computer science and electrical engineering, high-need foreign languages, security intelligence and related studies:

  • The Department of Homeland Security has a vested interest in attracting top talent from criminal justice programs—undergraduates and graduates. The DHS Scholarship program is aimed at academically talented students pursuing a diverse range of criminal science and technology studies in specialties deployed in the DHS: explosives, international and immigration studies, various security management specialties and many more. A couple dozen scholarships are awarded annually.
  • The National Security Agency (NSA) aims to recruit talent starting as early as high school. Scholarships include the Stokes Educational Scholarship, the Information Assurance Scholarship program for computer intelligence undergrads, and various paid internships for undergrads and grads.
  • The National Security Education Board administers one of the most public scholarship programs in the U.S. aimed at providing hands-on cultural immersion training to scores of American college students aiming for jobs in various areas of criminal justice, government, and law. The National Security Education Program’s Boren Scholarships are an ultra-competitive program that puts qualifying students into intensive study abroad programs where they become one with the culture and language. Awards are $20,000 for undergrads and $30,000 for grads for one full year abroad with the commitment to work within the federal government for no less than one year. The NSEP has a number of other scholarships programs aimed at critical language skills, as well.