High-quality training will be available everywhere and cheaper by 50%
At the end of 2017, the European Commission presented a report on the prospects for the use of the blockchain in education. Experts suggest using technology to combat fake diplomas, make payments, provide personal funding and student loans. Add to this the providers of online courses in symbiosis with the leading universities in the world and get the look of the future education industry.
We are treated by doctors with fake diplomas.
According to the Higher Education Accreditation Commission (CHEA), 100,000 fake diplomas are sold every year in the United States alone. Among the fake specialists are engineers, financiers and even doctors. In other countries, the situation is no better.
An illustration of how blockchain is able to solve a problem in the near future is a pilot project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2017, more than a hundred MIT students received digital versions of diplomas based on Blockcerts blockchain applications. This is not about full copies of documents, but only about timestamps. They are enough to verify the authenticity of the diploma and verify its owner.
Senior Assistant to the Dean of the Institute, Mary Callahan noted: “Initially, the key task was to provide students with a real right to their education documents. They will be able to own this information and transfer it safely. ” This can be done instantly, without resorting to the help of specialized organizations.
In the same year, Sony announced the creation of an education storage and transfer system based on the IBM blockchain. Here we are talking not just about identification tags, but about collecting in a digital form all the information about the subjects studied, grades, certificates and diplomas. Students and graduates will be able to independently provide access to proxies through smart contracts.
“The barrier for creating personal blockchain passports with all the data on educational experience will be a growing amount of information,” says Eugeniy Butyaev, CTO at CREDITS. - However, this problem will find its solution. You can already significantly reduce the amount of hard disk space required for storing data by using archiving. ”
How the introduction of blockchain technology will make education cheaper?
The above-mentioned report of the European Commission considered the possibility of paying tuition using blockchain systems. Now on cross-border payments, students lose up to 20% of the amount of transfer due to bank charges. "The use of the blockchain will reduce costs for similar transactions to a symbolic amount of $ 0.001," says Igor Chugunov, CEO at CREDITS. - An additional advantage of this solution will be a reduction in the number of financial disputes between universities and students. The data from the smart contracts concluded between the parties, and easily verifiable information about the transactions will be 100% proof in such conflicts. "
Another point of savings is the reduction of administrative costs of educational institutions, which inevitably affect the price of education. When introducing digital school certificates on the blockchain, containing all the information about applicants, their grades, achievements, exam results, you can fully automate the analysis of these data and instantly determine the best candidates without using a human resource. Employees can be eliminated from the processing of payment documents, regular checks of progress, etc.
Blockchain for scholarships and educational loans
The services of universities rise in price by an average of almost 4% per year. Such price growth rates have already made education inaccessible to most applicants, even from families belonging to the middle class. Those who can not pay for education is to rely on scholarships and loans. Procedures for obtaining financial assistance and loans are complex, bureaucratic, accompanied by a host of mistakes.
The established procedure for the distribution of scholarships will improve smart contracts. “Using digital documents with data on school grades and achievements, applicants will leave applications for scholarships in the blockchain system,” explains Igor Chugunov. - Based on this information, universities, charitable foundations and other organizations that provide grant funding will be able to automatically generate lists of applicants who meet their requirements. Money will be provided on the basis of smart contracts. Successful applicants will be able to accumulate funds of several scholarships at once, freely manage them, redirect money to another university when they change their place of study. In the smart contract, you can write detailed conditions for the provision of funding: limit the list of available educational institutions and faculties, oblige the fellow to maintain a certain level of academic performance at the university, to complete a full course of study. Nothing prevents such a system from being open to private philanthropists and employers. ”
Similarly, the future of the system of crediting applicants looks like. Collecting about $ 45,000 dollars to study at Harvard will become easier by simplifying the process of obtaining several loans from different lenders.
Education without borders
The full potential of the blockchain is revealed in the context of the organization of distance education. Princeton University and a number of other prestigious universities already offer their massive open online courses. They allow everyone to learn from the best teachers, from anywhere in the world.
The Internet is enough to implement such a training format, but the blockchain gives MOOC providers and their clients more opportunities:
- Acceptance of payments from students with minimal transaction costs.
- Registration of access to courses through smart contracts, reliably protecting the interests of both parties.
- Instant verification and confirmation of accreditation of educational institutions.
- Replacing simple electronic documents that are issued to students on the basis of the passage of an educational online program, protected by certificates. In the future, their status will be upgraded to the level of a full-fledged university diploma subject to the creation of a certification system for MOOC providers.
All this may seem a matter of the distant future, but the first educational blockchain platform has already been launched under the name ODEM. It promises its users content from leading Ivy League level universities. Access is paid for by system tokens. Listeners will, without leaving their place of residence, receive a first-class education and certificates, which are issued in electronic form on the results of examinations in the form of an essay.
“Our research shows that top universities achieve gross profits of 60-70% by increasing the cost of paying campus costs and administrative staff,” said ODEM Executive Director Bill Bird. “We are confident that we will be able to reduce prices for standard courses by 50% or even more.”