Online short courses are a route to a new career

After Thomas Teh was made redundant, the new online short courses are a route to retraining for a new career.

Thomas Teh has gone back to school studying a government-subsidised short course in cybersecurity management. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Education Minister Dan Tehan had set out to find the perfect candidate for his subsidised short courses, he couldn’t have done better than Thomas Teh.

As an older worker who conscientiously stuck with his career in information technology while he raised his family, Mr Teh harboured a desire to start a new chapter in his career.

So when NAB recently made him redundant, with some money to put towards retraining, and the federal government announced the short courses scheme with discounted fees, he was ready to take full advantage of the opportunity.

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Mr Teh neatly fitted with the government’s pitch to those who had lost jobs, who wanted a career change or who just wanted to learn.

He enrolled in a Graduate Certificate in Cybersecurity Management at Swinburne University, a course that is delivered via Swinburne Online.

It is one of four Swinburne is offering under the scheme, the others are a graduate certificate of educational studies and of management (workplace transformation) and an undergraduate certificate of information and communication technology.

“One of the reasons to do this is to upskill myself while in this environment — I was made redundant,” Mr Teh said.

“So I’ve got time to do some work in terms of getting myself ready for the next job.”

He graduated from La Trobe University with a science degree in the 1990s, became a systems engineer and progressed from there.

“It’s always been one of my aspirations to continue to study. A basic degree is not sufficient in the job market,” he said.

“A masters is preferable. It was always the goal but I haven’t studied for 30 years so I am starting out small.”

Two weeks in and Mr Teh has found the first challenge is absorbing the amount of material on the website — not just the course content, but clicking through all the tabs which lead to information about the course and amenities such as the student support available.

The class of 30 is participating in online discussions and every fortnight there is a teleconference with the tutor.

With a long career in IT, including in project management, he picked cybersecurity “because I find it more interesting and also everybody will be going online because of the COVID-19 crisis. My position is basically that cybersecurity will be in demand because organisations will have to focus on the security and protection.”

He is also looking for a new job and knows that juggling work and study might be too much. If so, he said the cybersecurity course will be the priority. It is the stepping stone to a new career he hopes will carry him into retirement in 15 years or so.

It is a good time in his life to be pursuing the change. “Most of the time in the last 10 or 20 years if I had wanted to stop work and go back to full time study I would have struggled financially. Now there is less pressure.”

While it feels strange to be back studying again after some decades, Mr Teh’s decision has given his three children, who have either been to university or are still there, some wry amusement.

“They tease me,” he said. “They say: ‘Dad now you know how we feel!’ ”