Page 23 - Cybersecurity Career Guide for UT Austin

CYBERSECURITY CAREER GUIDE 23
aspects of cybersecurity. No
experience with computer
science is required, and it is
free to students who qualify
for admission.
In Maryland, Howard
County Community College
operates an “early college”
cybersecurity program, open
to 10th-12th graders in the
area. Those who complete
the full sequence of courses
during their high school years
graduate with an entire year
of community college credits
under their belts. They need
just one more year of com-
munity college coursework
to get an associate degree in
cybersecurity and sit for their
first professional certifica-
tion exam in the field.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Even if your school does not
offer dual enrollment pro-
grams itself, investigate
what local community col-
leges or four-year schools
might be doing. In many
cases, simply being a resi-
dent of a county or state will
make you eligible to partici-
pate. Getting a leg up on your
undergraduate education
while you’re still in high
school will make the time
when you do finally pack up
and leave for college a whole
lot easier and even more fun!
ting the hang of college-level
work while still in high school
sets up students for contin-
ued success once they move
on to full-time, on-campus
studies. Indeed, studies
show that dual enrollment
experience increases both
high school and college grad-
uation rates, especially for
the kinds of students who
might not think higher edu-
cation is for them — low-in-
come and first-generation
students as well as under-
one course in either cyberse-
curity or computer science.
COLLEGE PROGRAMS
But it can be hard for schools
to find teachers or resources
to make the subject accessi-
ble for students. Colleges,
meanwhile, can provide both
experts in the field as well as
robust learning materials to
their dual enrollment part-
ners in the pre-college realm.
Making college resources
available to high school stu-
dents on their schedule plays
to the strengths of both
sides. And doing it online
makes it even more conve-
nient — students can work
any time they want, building
useful knowledge of a new,
real-world topic at their own
pace. As cybersecurity edu-
cation takes root, dual en-
rollment programs can both
deliver rich learning content
and launch students into
hugely in-demand careers.
Tennessee Tech Univer-
sity, for example, runs the
Golden Eagle Cybersecurity
Certificate Program through
a dual enrollment operation
that has recently expanded
to reach the entire state. A
three-course sequence of-
fered entirely online, the
program addresses both
technical and non-technical
represented minorities.
And for a subject like cy-
bersecurity, dual enrollment
programs deliver even greater
benefits. Outside the sphere
of typical high school teach-
ing and learning activities,
cybersecurity is nevertheless
a topic of growing impor-
tance in education. For exam-
ple, North Dakota recently
passed a law making cyber-
security a required subject in
high school; as of 2025, all
students will take at least