COD stops giving credits to police academy cadets

Police recruits trained at College of DuPage's Suburban Law Enforcement Academy will no longer receive academic credit for completing the program.

Officials at the Glen Ellyn-based school decided to end academic credit for the academy's criminal justice coursework after the Illinois Community College Board determined those classes don't qualify for state funding. The state agency also said COD had to revise the way it awarded credits to recruits at the academy.

"We will engage our criminal justice faculty through appropriate processes to determine jointly what, if any, academic credit is warranted," COD Acting Interim President Joseph Collins said in a statement.

The academy, which opened in 1994 to train suburban police officers, offers a 460-hour, 12-week program that combines lectures by regional and national experts with experimental learning, officials said. There are 50 recruits currently enrolled in the program.

The ICCB did a review of the program after the college increased the award of credits to academy recruits from 13 to 22 credit hours without changing the curriculum or increasing instructional time.

Ellen Andres, the ICCB's chief of staff, said the agency didn't have a problem with the increased number of credits.

But the ICCB found the college received state money for courses at the academy that didn't qualify for those grants because they don't meet certain requirements.

"You can't charge the state for that," Andres said. "They didn't have regular instructors going through the regular review committee. The courses were not through the curriculum course committee. They just said at the end of the program that they (the cadets) had met all the objectives of these 13 credits or 22 credits."

As a result, Andres said, the school will have to repay the state for academy courses that received grant money for fiscal years 2012 to 2014. That total amount is expected to be between $80,000 and $100,000, she said.

The ICCB didn't tell the college it couldn't award credits to the academy recruits. However, it recommended the college award credits under the category of "prior learning" or have COD faculty members involved in creating the curriculum and teaching the classes.

Andres said the police officers and other law enforcements experts who teach at the academy don't belong to COD's faculty. The academy is supported financially with tuition fees paid by the municipalities that send cadets there.

She said COD's decision to not award credits doesn't change what the academy does.

"The cadets have to have a certificate from SLEA to get their job," Andres said. "They don't necessarily need the credit hours from COD. That was just a second piece to it."

For example, she said, recruits who complete the exact same program at the University of Illinois don't get any academic credits from that school.