Austin Higbee spends his days working for Swire Coca-Cola, an Arizona bottler and distributor. In 2025, he enrolled at GateWay Community College (Arizona) to explore new IT certifications.
At GateWay, a friend introduced Higbee to the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab, which provides IT students the opportunity to gain hands-on experience outside of class with routers, switches, servers and different operating systems. The Lab has everything from 3D printers to a podcasting studio.
Higbee jumped right in, getting involved with lab events and offerings.
“It’s hard to learn what’s happening inside a system or protocol without real hands-on experience,” he said. “I was struggling to teach myself networking while studying for my CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate). It wasn’t until I was introduced to the lab, met the professors, and joined the helpful community of people who regularly attend that I started to think I could really do this.”
Cost is also a big factor, and fortunately, community college costs remain low, which can help both students and employers that offer tuition incentives.
“There’s just no way I could afford to attend a university without taking on a lot of debt,” Higbee said. “Attending GateWay allows me to take classes and pay for them without taking on that huge burden.”
As an adult returning to college, it can feel intimidating to actually start classes again.
“Honestly, the biggest challenge I face is time management,” Higbee said. “Balancing a full-time job, school, family and friends can be difficult and means sometimes I have to say no to things that I would like to do.”
However, there are many advantages to being a more mature college student. “For me,” Higbee explained, “one of the biggest benefits is I’ve built a strong work ethic being in the workforce for so many years. I rely on that work ethic everyday not only to put food on the table but to complete homework and stay on top of my studies.”
These studies will give Higbee a great deal of tech experience before he even leaves the classroom.
“I’m pursuing a Red Hat Linux certification,” he said, “and I believe that will round out my skill set since I’ve already earned Security+ and Cisco CCNA.”