Community Colleges: Best Cybersecurity Training Grounds?
"The time is really ripe for community colleges' role in this area of technology to expand, be recognized, to get the kind of support that it needs," Corby Hovis, cybersecurity program director at the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education program, said in an article posted on the website of The Chronicle for Higher Education. "All of the stars, I think, are aligned for this."
Still, are community colleges the best places to educate future cybersecurity professionals? University of Tulsa computer scientists Sujeet Shenoi expresses some doubts in the article: The state of cybersecurity education at community colleges is not very good. "I don't want to put down community colleges," says Shenoi, who runs one of three NSF-backed regional centers that support community-college cybersecurity education. "but if you are really good, chances are you wouldn't want to take a job at a community college as an instructor."
If you are really good, chances are you wouldn't want to take a job at a community college as an instructor.
In many respects, colleges at all levels are just starting to focus on cybersecurity as an academic discipline. And offering a IT security curriculum likely will be needed at all levels to meet the demands of governments and the private sector to safeguard their IT systems. A big question is: Will there be sufficient teachers to provide the training at all levels of post-high school education?
