Empowering university students with blockchain-based transcripts

Blockchain has emerged as a transformative technology, from its beginning as the basis of cryptocurrencies to wider applications in areas such as property registration and insurance due to its characteristic as a distributed ledger which can remove the need for a trusted third party to facilitate transaction. This spread of the technology to new application areas has been driven by the development of smart contracts – blockchain-based protocols which can automatically enforce a contract. One area where the types of problems being considered for blockchain exists is higher education. Students in higher education are increasingly mobile, and in an ever more agile world, the friction and delays caused by multiple levels of administration in higher education can cause many anxieties and hardships for students. primary platform for higher education promises to open up higher education to a wider range of learners than ever before. In this reflection paper, we give our initial considerations on the use of blockchain technology as a primary platform on which to base university transcripts in order to empower students and better fit today’s ever more agile society.