In the private security sector, as others, some workers are working hard, and facing danger; while others may be ticking along more near to normal; and others are twiddling their thumbs as their workplaces have shut altogether.
While people with time on their hands may be thinking in terms of improving themselves, that hardly rules out everyone else from wanting to do the same, whether it’s to give their career prospects and earning potential a boost, or to stretch their mind.
Just as the UK’s higher education sector has boomed, so have the options for the private security manager, and the ways they can access university courses – this round-up does not include private training companies, such as Tavcom, though their courses cover security management to BTEC level 5 (foundation degree level; level 6 is a degree, and level 7 a master’s degree).
Around 2000, the choice was between the University of Leicester’s Scarman Centre, and the Centre for Hazard and Risk Management (CHaRM) at the (pictured) University of Loughborough.
Leicester then and now served private security, HM Prison Service and related learners from the angle of criminology. The name Scarman – from Lord Scarman who led an official inquiry into 1981 riots – is only living on in annual lectures at Leicester, while the Loughborough offerings in security-risk management, once one of the two main go-to places in the UK, are defunct.
The choice has widened since. Just as new universities have come to the fore generally, to challenge the older Oxbridge and red-bricks, such as Portsmouth, so Portsmouth has built up postgraduate courses for private security, counter-fraud and related professionals, inside the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies (ICJS). Among its staff is Prof Mark Button, director of the centre for counter-fraud studies. A further sign of how newer-name universities are also becoming prots of call (pardon any pun), Prof Alison Wakefield last month moved from Portsmouth to the University of West London’s Cybersecurity and Criminology Centre.
What makes Alison Wakefield of interest to would-be students – and personal considerations do matter – is that she is among fairly few academic criminologists who have taken an interest in, and have a pedigree in, private security. Alison Wakefield is chairman of the Security Institute. Mark Button has published widely on fraud, and before academia worked for the Labour MP Bruce George, one of the few MPs to push for private security regulation leading to the Private Security Industry Act 2001.
Prof Phil Wood at Bucks New University, based in High Wycombe, has risen to become head of school of aviation and security. The former Royal Air Force Regiment officer is in overall charge of MScs in Critical Infrastructure Security; a BA (Hons) in Corporate Security Management (quite a rarity in the UK, although less so in the United States), and a BSc (Hons) in intelligence analysis and management.
As that suggests, apart from what were once novel degree subjects around security and risk management, ever more universities are offering yet more specialised MScs – if they can see enough of a market to make it worth their while – including by partnering with consultants and others like-minded. For instance, although it maybe aimed at more the police, a Liverpool John Moores University MSc in covert investigation and specialist investigation, which has a September start-date.
Featured in the November 2019 print issue of Professional Security magazine was the launch in London of Glasgow Caledonian University’s BSc honours degree in applied integrated security operations; and an MBA, a senior leaders master’s degree apprenticeship, in applied professional practice (security operations). Their modules were written by Simon Roberts of training company CAMOR.
An MSc in International Security and Risk Management was developed and is delivered by Perpetuity Academy, the education partner of the Security Institute; and a part of Linx International.
Last year saw the 25th anniversary of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV), at the University of St Andrews. Ahead of an anniversary symposium in November, CSTPV Director Dr Tim Wilson said: “While the age of highly organised and professional conspiracies – such as that represented by the Provisional IRA – has apparently faded, it has been replaced by the more diffuse spectre of radicalised individuals and small groups conducting more spontaneous attacks in the name of Islamist or far-right ideologies.
“Such attacks are often amateur but, as the recent horrors in New Zealand showed, can still cause enormous carnage. As the third decade of the 21st century looms, terrorism remains as urgent a moral and policy challenge to society as ever. The tradition of rigorous and sober scholarship that CSTPV has represented for a quarter of century is needed more than ever.”
Not quite as old but with a pedigree too is the Department of Security and Crime Science, at University College London (UCL). Formed as the Jill Dando Institute, to mark the BBC presenter murdered in 1999, the JDI offers qualifications which cater to students, academics, and practitioners. As the department’s name suggests, its USP is its drawing on UCL’s related disciplines, such as architecture, economics, engineering, geography, medicine, psychology, statistics and town planning; to research crime mapping, forensics, what works in policing and emerging crime threats.
Cranfield University is an option for those with a military slant. It offers for example an MSc in Counterterrorism, Risk Management and Resilience; and among forensics courses, a Forensic Investigation of Heritage Crime MSc.
This hardly touches on cyber-security courses, which likewise divide into computer science, computer forensics, information security ….
