IN a change of academic status, the city's vocational police college will start offering bachelor's degree courses from the next semester, the police announced on Wednesday.

Come next semester, the vocational college, which used to offer three-year study courses, will become a "normal" college.

The first 150 students enrolled at the Shanghai Police College for the bachelor's will study for courses covering social security, crime investigation and internet security & law enforcement.

The college, meanwhile, will continue to offer training to policemen.

Currently, it has about 3,000 full-time students and trains more than 10,000 policemen every year.