Blockchain Will Revolutionize Higher Education

right now

there’s a technological revolution

unfolding that the majority of people

don’t realize is happening even though

this technology is relatively unknown

it will change our lives in the near

future i’m talking about blockchain

and its promise to power the future of

our online society

today i want to help you understand what

blockchain is

and then take you through a story to

show how blockchain will be used

directly in our lives as college

students

so the dictionary definition of a

blockchain is a distributed ledger

technology

but this sounds like a lot of tech mumbo

jumbo so let’s see if there’s a better

way to figure out what this means

whenever you make a transaction using

your debit card your bank is the sole

entity in charge of making sure you have

enough money in your account to make

that transaction

in fact they have the final say over

everything you do related to money

since they control the account after all

if you make a purchase that your bank

doesn’t agree with

they have the power to censor your

transaction

in theory venmo could ban your account

after you send money to a friend with a

memo

thanks for the coke you may be

referencing a sugary brown drink

but venmo may think you’re referencing a

powdery white substance

and can permanently ban you from their

platform and though this sounds like a

silly example

it has real world implications imagine

if your payment provider

only lets you donate to their preferred

political party or shop at the grocery

store that paid them the most this type

of censorship is unacceptable in our

modern society

especially with the growing prevalence

of digital transactions

and blockchain offers the solution

unlike paypal

visa or any other payment system you use

today blockchain is decentralized

which means there’s no central authority

controlling the network

each person who uses the blockchain

network has a say in how it is governed

and helps ensure that transactions are

completed this may be hard to understand

on its own

so let’s use an example to help clear it

up let’s say three children have a chore

sheet in their house

each of the kids bob alice and sue have

chores they need to complete

once they’re complete they’re crossed

off the list mom checks the list

and each kid receives their allowance

one problem

who do we trust to hold this list we

can’t trust any of the kids

because they could claim they did their

chores when they really didn’t and mom

is a busy lady

so she doesn’t have time to check that

the chores are complete what do we do

how about this instead of keeping only

one list

let’s keep a master list on the fridge

that mom checks every night

and will give each child a copy of this

list that they update whenever they

finish one of their chores

so when bob finishes cleaning his room

he’ll cross off his list

but the other three lists won’t

automatically update

at the end of the day the kids will come

together and compare lists

when alice and sue see that bob claims

he cleaned his room they’ll both go

check

and if they’re satisfied that he did

they will cross it off their lists as

well

and since everyone agrees that bob’s

room is cleaned it gets crossed off the

fridge list

and bob gets paid for a hard day’s work

sue

tried to be sneaky and claimed she also

cleaned her room when she really didn’t

but in order for her to get paid she has

to get bob and alice to agree first

when they both go check it still looks

like a big stye

so they refuse to cross it off their

lists and without a majority

it can’t be crossed off the fridge list

so sue’s claim is invalidated

at the end of the day once the fridge

list is finalized it can’t be changed

again

so this means that if sue’s feeling

particularly devious she can’t claim she

cleaned a room on tuesday

if it’s next thursday this concept is

called

immutability and ensures that data on

the blockchain is final

and can never be changed so this is an

example of a simple blockchain

where each member of the network in this

case the children

are in charge of verifying the

legitimacy of each other’s transactions

up until now the most prominent use case

for blockchain has been in payments

in fact this can be seen in the

cryptocurrency bitcoin which was

actually the first

blockchain however there are nearly

infinite possibilities

anything with data or that represents

value can be stored on a blockchain

healthcare information so that hospitals

are able to access patient records

without having to go through tons of

complicated steps

sure what about property titles which

would remove the need for title

companies

and save both home buyers and sellers

time and money why not

now that we know a bit about how

blockchain works let’s transition to

focusing in on a few examples of how

blockchain will be used in higher

education

and in what better way than with a story

about the student of the future

cornelius now i know he doesn’t look

like a college student but he skipped a

couple grades

trust me so cornelius is a member of

vanderbilt’s class of 2030.

he’s eager to start the semester

including the one thing that modern

students hate the most

buying textbooks every college student’s

best friend is copy and paste

however it’s every college publisher’s

worst nightmare it allows for students

to illegally download and share

textbooks

in response publishers have begun moving

to a subscription-based model

which is incredibly student unfriendly

these subscriptions can cost the same

price as a regular textbook

but only last a semester as opposed to

forever

blockchain offers a solution to satisfy

both parties

since books represent something of value

they can be stored on the blockchain

so when cornelius buys his textbooks he

receives a blockchain based copy

when it’s in his account he can read it

just like any other ebook

however at the end of the semester he

could resell it to another student

and send it to their blockchain account

this makes digital textbooks

offer the same ownership and resale

value as physical with all the

flexibility of a digital medium

it allows students like cornelius to

truly own their digital property

and let textbook publishers rest assured

that their textbooks aren’t circulating

illegally

so with all of his textbooks on his

laptop cornelius is ready to start the

semester

except for one thing he needs to

register and get an identity within the

vanderbilt system

so we can get into buildings and access

online accounts

right now we use a system of a physical

card and a centralized online platform

though this seems like an elegant

solution there are plenty of flaws in

this design

first there’s one centralized point of

failure

if the service that vanderbilt uses goes

down or experience an

outage cornelius will be unable to enter

buildings using his phone

or access his online accounts similarly

if a hacker gets into that database they

get every single username and password

associated with vanderbilt

including cornelius’s blockchain solves

this problem by being distributed

so there’s no way for you not to have

access to your information

second centralized systems can be

expensive how much do you think it costs

on average to reset a forgotten password

a couple pennies

maybe a dollar try seventy dollars

this means that if a mere two thousand

students forget their password and want

to reset it

it costs the university on average a

hundred and forty thousand dollars

an identity system based on the

blockchain could be linked to a user’s

phone

and eliminate the need for these costly

password changes

well we’ve made it to the end of the

semester cornelius has worked hard

and he’s ready to start applying for

internships each place that he’s applied

to

asks him for a copy of his transcript

typically

this process can take seven to ten days

by mail and cost upwards of ten dollars

per transcript depending on the

university

blockchain solves this problem in an

incredibly simple and intuitive manner

just like textbooks transcripts

represent something of value

and thus can be stored on the blockchain

if universities issued transcripts on

the blockchain

students would be able to quickly and

easily send them to prospective

employers

without there being any worry of forgery

just like transcripts

diplomas can also be issued on the

blockchain

in fact this has been trial run at mit

and is being used at nearly 100

universities around the world

and it offers numerous benefits over the

traditional method of going through the

registrar and paying a fee

first the diploma is always valid even

if the university shuts down and you can

no longer order a traditional diploma

you still have your blockchain diploma

and it is provably legitimate

due to the immutability of the

blockchain second they’re tamper-proof

while a typical pdf of a diploma could

be doctored the blockchain version

cannot

once again due to its immutability if it

was tampered with

an employer would be able to see this

change compared to the original and know

to definitely not

hire this prospective employee

fake diplomas are a billion dollar

industry and they could be affecting you

directly

your doctor or nurse may have never gone

to school or the architect constructed

your home

may be winging it blockchain solves this

problem and both increases efficiency

and prevents fraud altogether to wrap

things up

through fallen coordinators through his

college experience we’ve seen how

blockchain will revolutionize higher

education

the best part about this fictional story

is that it will one day be fact

for millions of college students and

billions of people around the world will

be using blockchain in their everyday

lives

it will strengthen our society solve

complex problems

and create a better digital world for

all of us thank you