If you’re a student at the Wharton School, taking their recent blockchain economics certificate, here’s some news for you. You can now pay for its tuition costs with cryptocurrency. The institution made the announcement on Thursday, and it’s a big deal in the mainstream adoption of crypto.
The business school of University of Pennsylvania is possibly the first Ivy League college allowing students to pay for tuition with crypto. This was a major announcement and could lead to other schools following suite. The certificate program last around six weeks and costs around $3,800. That’s about 6 percent of Bitcoin’s current value. The aim of the certificate program is to give professionals the education and tools to integrate digital assets and blockchain into businesses.
At a time when blockchain technology is proving useful for a number of applications, such types of courses have become a need. Cryptocurrency aside, blockchain can address various issues that come with centralizing information. These include a lack of transparency, and high risks of fraud.
According to a managing partner at the Prysm Group, Guido Molinari, providing students the option was the most obvious decision. As a blockchain consulting company, Prysm Group partnered with the Wharton School to develop the program.
He explained that not accepting crypto payments for the course would be hypocritical. It would appear like this: on one hand you’re discussing the potential and benefits of blockchain, but on the other, don’t consider it a good idea to take digital currency as a payment.
In fact, it looks like the decision proved beneficial. That’s because up until Friday, almost 10 percent of students who registered for the program paid using digital currency. However, no other courses at the University of Pennsylvania are offering the option to pay in crypto. According to Molinari, this course isn’t intended to be an experiment in accepting crypto either.
The Wharton School is among the many institutes in the country providing courses on blockchain technology. The school’s alumni include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is an outspoken proponent of cryptocurrency and an investor as well.
The program is designed to give students various practical uses for blockchain technology. This will offer much more clarity to professionals in the business and finance sector because they may have heard of decentralized banking, but aren’t sure of where to go from there.
The curriculum will cover the types of digital assets, blockchain protocol, and smart contracts. It also gives students a chance to discuss applications of blockchain technology, and how to choose one for it. The biggest aspect of the course is to give financial analysts a framework based on which they can assess cryptocurrencies. This way, they can assess traditional investments and decentralized investments as well.
