Blockchain in Education: From Social Inclusion to Combating Fake Diplomas

translated from Portuguese: https://exame.com/blog/claudia-mancini/blockchain-na-educacao-da-inclusao-social-ao-combate-aos-diplomas-falsos/

Who has never heard of at least one case of a fake university degree from a company employee, researcher or politician? For those who do not want to warm up the chair and use their own neurons a lot, internet sites offer these papers in droves, including the timbre of renowned universities such as the Federal Fluminense University (UFF) and Cambridge, in England.

Distance learning journalist and investor, John Bear, in his book “Degree Mills: The Billion-Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over a Million Fake Diplomas” - something like “Education mills: The billionaire industry that has sold more million fake degrees ”- showed that half of the PhD degrees in the USA were pure lies. The book is from 2012, and everything indicates that the problem continues. The country issues about 45 thousand diplomas a year and a similar number of counterfeits are produced in the same period.

Therefore, blockchain technology has been touted as a tool against this binge. With this technology, it is possible to create networks that connect participants such as schools, universities, employers and public education agencies. Thus, when a student tries to insert academic information on the network, it is possible to verify its veracity and then make an immutable and well-encrypted record in the blocks. In addition, once registered, this history can be accessed by interested parties: for example, the university checks data on the student who tries to enroll in the institution and the employer checks whether the diploma is real.

Inclusion with ease

But it is not just to prevent fraud that blockchain can be useful in the area of education. Another use, which would also be very interesting for Brazil , is to facilitate the inclusion of low-income students, without access to a computer or internet, to the university system. This is the case at the University of North Texas Dallas (UNTD), which mainly serves students who are the first generation of their families who go to university. In addition to facilitating inclusion, the project seeks to do this safely and reliably.

In a conversation with this columnist, UNTD President Bob Mong said that students download their academic information through a mobile application. The blockchain platform used is that of Greenlight Credentials. Other partners are the Dallas Independent School District, which has 154,000 students, the local Dallas College community, which has 85,000 students, and other school districts. Through the app, students can enroll at UNTD and other universities, as well as apply for scholarships. The project began to be implemented in late 2019 and hundreds of applications have already been made. Now, the focus is to increase the use of the app.

Soon, Mong said, Greenlight will add other resources that will help students contact social service agencies and solve problems related to transportation, child care and mental health. Yes, an application is planned, Vital Sign 6, which will help UNTD, high schools and post-secondary schools to detect signs such as depression. "This is part of an effort to add mental problems to the five vital signs that doctors check on a person," he explained. Depression is the most disabling disease in the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

In the same line of making life easier for students, universities and employers, the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), had published, until July, 155 thousand academic credentials in electronic format on a blockchain platform. There are 66 thousand students who graduated from HCT since 1992. Students can pass them on to other universities and employers for years, all by cell phone. The UAE has adopted technology a in several sectors, especially in the government.

There is so much confidence in the blocks that Australia's National Blockchain Plan provides for the use of technology in three priority sectors, including education. The American Council on Education also received funding from the government this year to study the use of technology. Last March, the Brazilian Ministry of Education asked private colleges to study the registration of digital degrees using blockchain.

Tokens to encourage studies

Now, if the goal is to encourage people to study by the end of the course, blockchain can also provide a solution. Two years ago, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank created the Learning Coin to test the technology. To do this, they decided to give the token to employees studying subjects related to blockchain and digital currencies in an application.

BitDegree is a platform with the same objective of encouraging studies, but with a social hang. The idea is to make the students, many of them unable to pay for the courses, arrive until the end of classes to earn the tokens. They can also win scholarships, paid in Bitdegree coin by those who have already received the tokens and want to help those in need. These tokens can also be transferred to Ethereum portfolios.

What's more, there are universities that have announced that bitcoins could be used to pay tuition. Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts is one of them. In 2017, the institution reported that students could exchange their coins for Swiss francs at Bitcoin Suisse AG, to pass them on to the educational institution. In this way, the university avoids currency risks, such as price changes. Princeton and Berkeley are also in the group that have made a similar announcement in recent years, although there is no further information on their websites.

Clearly, we are only at the beginning of the use of blockchain in the area of education. But use cases already have this variety and indicate a lot of potential. For this reason, educational institutions and public bodies also need to study technology and how it can solve their challenges, which are always so great in any country. The opportunity is given, just take it.