National University

What you'll study

The DCJ requires a minimum of 45 graduate credit hours through the university across nine courses and a dissertation. Core course topics described in the programme materials include:

• Management issues in criminal justice — contemporary management challenges, administrative and theoretical principles affecting agencies.
• Organizational structure and administration — internal roles, functions, application of managerial concepts, policy formulation and agency performance improvement.
• Ethics in criminal justice — theoretical foundations of ethics, ethical challenges in practice, and ethics related to investigations, evidence handling and courtroom testimony.
• Public budgeting — budget formulation, implementation and execution for public and nonprofit organizations, tools of public budgeting and capital budgeting/asset management.
• Public personnel administration — personnel management in the public sector, legal and policy frameworks, trends and strategies to enhance human capital.
• Strategic planning — tools and skills for developing, implementing and assessing strategic plans for criminal justice organizations.
• Specialization courses — three specialization courses (listed as Specialization Course 1–3) to tailor study to a chosen subfield.
• Scholarly literature and academic writing — conducting exhaustive literature searches, developing comprehensive literature reviews and identifying dissertation topics.
• Univariate inferential statistics — building skills to perform and interpret univariate parametric and non‑parametric tests and interpret statistical output (course description truncated in source).

Entry requirements

Admission requires a conferred master’s degree from an accredited institution. The university may accept up to 12 semester credit hours of graduate transfer credit with grades of B or better. Graduation requirements include completion of a minimum of 45 credit hours through the university, a programme grade point average of at least 3.0, satisfactory completion of a DCJ prospectus, university approval of the dissertation manuscript and oral presentation, and submission of the approved final dissertation manuscript (original unbound and an electronic copy). Official transcripts for the master’s degree and any accepted transfer credit must be on file. All financial obligations to the university must be satisfied before diploma issuance.

Career prospects

The programme prepares graduates for senior administrative, management and leadership roles across criminal justice agencies and related public safety organizations. Emphasis is on capabilities to plan, budget, coordinate and operate large‑scale initiatives to protect communities, lead programs that promote equitable justice, and conduct applied research informing professional practice. National University materials note a range of potential career opportunities for DCJ graduates.

Scholarships & funding angle

The programme page states there is no application fee. Beyond that, the source does not list specific scholarships; prospective students should contact the university’s Enrollment Office or financial aid office for current funding, scholarship and tuition assistance options and any state‑specific availability details.