The field of cybersecurity is constantly evolving, and so is the educational picture for its current and future workforce.
Security professionals join both government and private-sector jobs today via an educational hodgepodge of curricula, certifications and on-the-job training; and instruction models run the gamut from online to in-person coursework, from targeted workshops to multi-year programs.
This all poses a problem for federal agencies, given that many higher echelons in the GS scale still require a minimum four-year degree. The requirement amounts to a disincentive for an entire swath of highly qualified professionals who may not necessarily pursue—or care about—such a traditional degree. So far, amid this complicated ecosystem for learning, there’s been no overwhelming consensus on what works best.
It’s time for that to change in one major respect: When it comes to cybersecurity, we need to steer students away from assuming they need a four-year degree and toward the option of cybersecurity taught as a vocation.
Four Year Programs Struggle with Agility
For a number of reasons, it’s increasingly clear that cybersecurity is something best learned in trade schools, internships and other apprenticeship-style settings. Everyone stands to gain from this approach, but especially the federal government. Let’s take a closer look at why this is the case.
It’s one thing to build bachelor's and graduate programs around disciplines like biology, English or engineering. It's also entirely appropriate to build a four-year degree around computer science and certain fields like data science and computational physics. But things are different when it comes to cybersecurity.
In trying to stay ahead of rapidly growing digital threats, cybersecurity is essentially the tip of the computer science spear. It’s an environment that is at once ever- ..
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