Cengage, the parent business unit of Infosec Institute (one of our clients), published its first ever “hold your feet to the fire” report on the outcomes that learner’s achieved by going through its courses. You can get a copy without registering from cengagework.com.
The report takes a deep dive into the outcomes that learner’s experienced after engaging with two of its business units: ed2go (online certificate training courses in career-focused disciplines) and Infosec (cybersecurity education). There’s a set of tangible benefits noted on page 9, reporting on overall / combined outcomes, such as course completion (83%), earning an industry certification (90%), a meaningful change in employment for the learner (36%), and income growth after three years (32% average).
And then there’s a specific focus on health courses via ed2go and cybersecurity courses via Infosec. The latter was of interest to us, because yes, there continues to be a shortage of qualified people to fill open cybersecurity roles in the United States (and beyond). Infosec quantifies its contribution as upskilling over 20,000 cyber professionals over the past two years (page 17). Across these learners, those who opted into the research noted an incremental 12% increase in income during the three years after completing their course. Here’s the money diagram from the report (page 19), with the dark colored bars showing standardized income growth year-on-year due to normal factors such as more experience, time in the job, seniority, etc., and the dark yellow appendages on each bar the additional / incremental / beyond the standard extra income derived that’s attributed to taking and completing the Infosec course. That’s a pretty cool result.
The methodology is explained in the final pages of the report, including how Cengage used third party data sources to confirm change in income.
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