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Comment by sloanesturz | Hacker News Reader

I would love to see a program like ROTC -- the government pays for you to get a CS degree and then you work for the Digital Service to start your career.

You end up being 26 with a great education and a solid work experience under your belt. Seems like a win-win!

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Most ROTC cadets do not have scholarships, and for their first two years they recieve no money. Of those students, only during their 3rd and 4th years do they recieve any funding at all, which is a stipend of approx. $300-500 a month and only once they have signed a contract to commission.

At my university everyone in ROTC had full tuition as well as room and board paid for for all 4 years. And they received the stipend on top of that. They did have to commit after the end of the first year though.

That's very close to what the SMART program is. I'm a SMART scholar (PhD level), it's been a good experience so far. http://smart.asee.org/

That has already existed for at least the past decade or more. It's called the Cyber Corps. Granted it's focused on computer security and doesn't come with the ego boost that being crammed in a small room at the White House seems to give people here but it is a CS/engineering scholarship for service program.

https://www.sfs.opm.gov/

As someone in the 20-35 bracket who works in cyber-security, I have never heard of this program. I was never told about it in high school, in my CS program, nor have I heard of it at work.

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