The difficulty level of a criminal justice degree depends on each student's interests and abilities. The coursework pushes students to sharpen their analytical and critical thinking skills in particular. Specifically, criminal justice — a liberal arts program — often requires a great deal of independent reading, research, and writing, but it also involves group collaboration on projects. Students may wonder whether a criminal justice program will be more difficult online or in person. However, online programs are comparable to in-person programs. To maintain accreditation, schools typically design the curriculum for their online criminal justice programs to be the same as — or very similar — to their on-campus counterparts. Courses generally cover the same materials and meet the same objectives, and they are often taught by the same faculty members. Whether students follow a traditional path or pursue distance education, they must fulfill a standardized set of graduation requirements to earn their degrees.