alt Hacker News>The kinds of credentials themselves are not a signal of quality to me.
i hear this online a lot but never from the companies and hiring managers that hired our cybersec students for the last decade.
keep in mind, this is not a 6-month "intro to cybersec" or bootcamp-style program.
Goodwill with hiring managers is good. But in a down economy it'd be helpful to boost your reputation more broadly.
If I were running your college's program, I would invest in a presence at Defcon. If just one your students could use their skills to uncover and present something genuinely interesting, it would be worth covering their airfare and accommodations just to get your logo on the screen. If you could do this every other year, your program would have an unparalleled brand.