LONDON - The biggest ever change since police forces in Britain were established will mean all new police officers in England and Wales having to be educated to university degree level, it was announced Thursday.

The College of Policing announced that the change in recruitment requirements will be introduced from 2020.

Currently police officers have been able to rise through in ranks from constables to chief constables, without needing university educations.

There are currently no standard recruitment requirements for recruits across the 43 forces in England and Wales which employ around 125,000 police officers of all ranks. Currently less than 40 percent of recruits have a university degree or post-graduate qualification.

The College of Policing said the academic training would help address changes in crime-fighting.

Future recruits to police forces will be able to follow a three-year degree apprenticeship, a postgraduate conversion course or a university degree.

The move has been welcomed by the National Police Chiefs' Council who said the changes would help modernise the police service.

Chief Constable Alex Marshall from the College of Policing said the nature of police work has changed significantly.

In a statement, Marshall said: "Cyber-enabled crime has increased. So has the need for officers and staff to investigate and gather intelligence online and via information technology. Protecting vulnerable people has rightly become a high priority for policing. Officers and staff now spend more of their time working to prevent domestic abuse, monitor high-risk sex offenders and protect at-risk children.

"We recognise that the strengths of policing include its accessibility as a career to people of all backgrounds and it being a vocation. We want to preserve these strengths. But we also want to ensure that the increasingly complex activities undertaken by people working in policing are properly recognized."

The College of Policing, which sets standards of ethics and training for the police service, is negotiating with 12 universities about running the degree courses.

The likely syllabus will cover a range of subjects from the law to safeguarding the vulnerable.