Hey man, don’t let these kinds of answers discourage you.

I'm not saying he can't do it. I and plenty of other people have switched from completely unrelated careers into tech. I'm saying given the breadth of information for pentesting, I doubt that it could be learned in a single year at two classes a year like the U of M program claims.

You don’t need to be an expert just to break into the field.

Never claimed that either. The stuff I cited isn't expert level in any of its relevant fields. However there's a major difference between being a subject matter expert and starting from zero. Pentesting is one of those fields that requires knowledge to build off of.

The description above is accurate if you want to write your own tools or start your own company

Heavily disagree. I talk about my reasons in this comment. I'd argue that you'd need way more knowledge than this to start your own sec company or find new vulns + write your own exploits.

I'm not trying to say OP can't do it. Like I said, plenty of people (including myself) have switched careers. However I'm a big believer in giving people the background information with what to expect since this is a career change. OP is talking about $16k in a program I'm suspicious would actually prepare him for industry along with quitting his existing job now to pursue a job in said industry.

I will always encourage people to pursue tech if that's what they want it to do. It's unique in that it's a STEM field with relatively low startup costs to learn. I just don't think that blind encouragement without proper background knowledge is a good thing. I've seen way too many people learn the wrong things or spend thousands on the wrong program only to end up very far from their goal.