Decentralized Transcripts

Create a Self Regulatory Organization to help universities move transcripts to the blockchain. Transcripts will use Cardano's wrapped coins.

Eighteen years of experience in the field of education, and a Doctorate in Organizational Leadership.

This project would seek to establish a self-regulatory organization (SRO) that would be responsible for establishing protocols and standards for schools and universities to use when moving their transcripts to the blockchain. MIT has already moved some transcripts to the blockchain and have proven that it is possible. Below is an explanation for why this is an important project.

The industrial revolution era education systems that we still employ are in desperate need of disruption. In the current system, schools and universities have absolute authority over both access to the education and what courses make up a degree.

This primary authority of a school or university is derived from its ownership of the transcript. The transcript both allows schools and universities to enforce their graduation requirements and acts as a stamp of authentication of a student's knowledge, skills, and degree completion when applying to a job or other school. In many ways, the transcript is the glue that holds the entire educational system together. It enables the authority of education to remain centralized within the school or university system.

By moving transcripts to the blockchain, educational experience will be able to be verified without a piece of paper from the institution. Once this happens, blockchain transcripts will very quickly decentralize the authority of the school or university. With blockchain transcripts, the authority of education will be transferred to the student because they will be able to go out, get educational experiences from various sources, and create a more robust resume. It will lessen the importance the school's or university's ability to control the system, and it will effectively transfer that ability to the student. Instead of listing a degree from a university on a resume, someone would eventually present a blockchain hash containing a deeper portfolio with courses, experiences, and samples of work that the student has accumulated. The blockchain transcript might be made up of credits from some traditional college courses, internships with corporations, and some work experiences done with a nonprofit.

Once this happens, I envision most businesses and nonprofits jumping onboard to offer educational experience "credit" for an individual's portfolio. Their entrance into the transcript market will create true disruption to the educational system worldwide. Imagine graduating from high school, going straight to work for Microsoft and, after four years, earning enough educational credits to receive a bachelor's degree in computer science.

The integrity of the current educational system is maintained by a strict accreditation process. Decentralizing the authority of the educational system will therefore require that the accreditation system be upgraded and expanded to be able to manage blockchain protocols and the ability to accredit alternate educational experiences.

It is possible that every school, business, and nonprofit alike would have its own educational currencies.

In order to make this work, the following steps would need to take place:

1. A SRO, similar to ICANN, would need to be established to govern the standards and protocols for blockchain transcripts. The SRO would also be responsible for authenticating an institutions' ability to grant transcript credits.

2. Resources/education would need to be provided to regional accrediting agencies to aid them in the ability to expand their reach to easily accredit business and nonprofits. They will need to create micro-approvals that would accredit non-profits and corporations for certain skills.

3. Schools and businesses will need resources to be able to create educational currencies.

4. Third-party Dapps will need to be made to serve the new "resume" system. Products need to develop ways to graphically organize, visualize, and evaluate a collection of educational currencies into a cohesive experience.

Cardano's cross chain interoperability to wrap coins would serve as the ideal platform for gathering, storing, and representing a diverse portfolio of educational currency credits on an international scale. They would basically be "wrapped credits."

This project would lay the groundwork for schools and universities around the world to quickly build out their own blockchain transcripts and utilized Cardano to move their transcripts from one institution to another.

In order to begin this process, funding would be required to create the SRO and work to establish protocols for schools and universities to use.