“This measure will provide additional options for students and the recently unemployed to engage with higher education across a wider range of fields, which will help further the position of the nation and our workforce to move out of the economic downturn,” a department spokesman said.

“There is some crossover between the terms ‘micro-credential’ and ‘short course’; both are generally something shorter than a full qualification. The short courses are a type of micro-credential. The short course is a credit-bearing micro-credential, meaning that it can be used to ‘stack’ into a full qualification at a later time.”

” The Australian Cyber Security Growth Network said the cyber security workforce had grown by 4000 to 26,500 since 2017. The sector grew by 6 per cent a year, compared with overall national growth of 2 per cent a year.”