Blockchain and Education: A Big Idea in Need of Bigger Thinking
Noelle Acheson is a 10-year veteran of
company analysis and the author of CoinDesk Weekly, a custom-curated newsletter
delivered every Sunday, exclusively to CoinDesk subscribers.
In this opinion piece, Acheson discusses
upcoming regulatory changes in Europe, explaining how trends in payments
rule-making may unexpectedly align with those in the blockchain sector.
You've probably been there: an interview,
either for a job or university admission, with the interviewer sitting across
from you scrutinizing a piece of paper that holds your credentials. And you
can't shake the feeling that she doesn't believe you.
It turns out that interviewers are right to
be skeptical. According to a recent survey, over half of
resumes and job applications contain falsifications, and over three quarters
are misleading.
This past week, Sony revealed progress on
the development of a blockchain platform to
store and share education records. Developed in conjunction with IBM, the service
aims to reduce fraud and make it easier to share the information with third
parties for recruitment and assessment.
The goal is worthy. Education credentials
have largely resisted the pull of technology, and are still held in diverse
formats on siloed databases distributed around the world.
However, Sony's plan to partner with select institutions
misses the bigger opportunity: scalability and impact.
Credible credits
For credentials to be useful, they need to be
universally recognized and verifiable. In the case of education, this is still
largely a manual process that often involves paper documentation and
case-by-case checking.
A blockchain platform can help with the trust
and distribution issues, but, in an incongruous twist for a decentralized
technology, that could well mean adopting a centralized solution.
So, why use a blockchain at all? Couldn't an
immutable database with access privileges do the trick?
As always, it depends on the overall vision.
It's fair to assume that Sony's intention is to start small and then scale up
to include a vast range of educators. So, further down the road the ease of
data sharing and updating offered by a distributed ledger could be an important
factor.
However, even then, the targeted and
permissioned approach is likely to encounter scaling bottlenecks and quality
control issues (who decides which institutions deserve to belong?).
Furthermore, it could evolve into a
"two-tier" system, in which some of the more progressive and wealthy
schools participate and others don't. Or, even worse, it could open up the
market to a chaos of competing systems with different technologies and
criteria.
Aim high
A faster and more reliable path to widespread
adoption would be to partner with the organizations responsible for deciding
which educational institutions are trustworthy: the official education
accreditors.
Most jurisdictions have them (some have
several), which means that the work of validating the education has already
been done. However, there is limited collaboration and significant duplication
between them, something that a blockchain platform could help with.
The accreditors could be tasked with managing
the system, updating university access and validating credential types.
What’s more, they would be better placed to
recommend adjustments in light of sector shifts. As new types of universities
and forms of study emerge, the nature of certification is changing. In
addition, "lifelong learning" is becoming more than a buzzword, as
skill sets need refreshing and career paths become more flexible.
A platform managed by organizations well
positioned to spot trends and needs, with a "top-down" approach
rather than a piecemeal, "bottom-up" strategy, would be able to
better satisfy the requirements of an evolving marketplace.
It would also boost the confidence of both employers
and students – and in so doing, could end up contributing to a more flexible
and qualified labor force.
That’s a tall order for any new technology.
But the need is clear and the upside substantial, assuming the initiative ends
up being open, universal and fair.
While it is important to test and iterate,
small solutions are likely to end up creating even more silos and tiers. As
with the related field of identity, the impact lies in thinking big.
Globe image via Shutterstock
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior Manager @
Knowledge Repository
Khaitan
& Co
Upcoming Conference | National Conference on Transforming Libraries into
Knowledge Resource Centres 11th – 12th January 2018, SNDT Mumbai For further
details contact Prof Jyoti Bhabal (jyotibhabal@gmail.com )
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