“Bletchley Park – Draco2008” by Draco2008 from UK – Bletchley Park. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bletchley_Park_-_Draco2008.jpg#/media/File:Bletchley_Park_-_Draco2008.jpg

Second World War codebreaking hub Bletchley Park could become a specialist codebreaking college for teams aged 16 to 19. The aim is to educate and recruit cybersecurity workers.

As we’ve covered several times, the UK facility helped crack several key German encryption codes, giving Allied forces better intelligence and, by most estimates, shortening the duration of the war by as much as two years. After decades of secrecy, the former country mansion is now open as a museum.

Several organizations including communications firms, an information security professional body and the National Museum of Computing have now formed a partnership to create the college. The plan is to operate it as a boarding college for around 500 students. Entry to the three-year program would be based on specialist aptitude tests rather than formal educational qualifications.

The plan is for around 40 percent of the teaching to be specifically on cybersecurity skills, with the rest of the time taken up by related subjects such as computer science, mathematics and physics.

The organizers say they want to offer the courses without tuition costs. While they hope to get government funding, they say any shortfall would be made up by corporate sponsors.