The University of St. Gallen based in Switzerland is looking to implement blockchain technology for combatting fake diplomas, which is a type of fraudulent activity that has been increasing globally over the last few years.

Degree certification

As per the CNN Money Switzerland interview from September 19^th, the University of St. Gallen announced that it will be launching a blockchain-based initiative for verifying the authenticity of its degrees only in a few seconds, which usually takes up several days traditionally. Harald Rotter, the CIO of the university, said:

“I saw that it could be necessary, and it could be a valid use case to transfer or to make easier to validate our diplomas based on a digital process on blockchain.”

The university has partnered with BlockFactory, a Swiss blockchain start-up, and will apply its certification protocol to create immutable diploma certificates which are registered on the Ethereum blockchain. 

Malaysia and Canada also battling fake degrees

According to a previous report, the Ministry of Education in Malaysia, also, is trying to fight the rising cases of fake educational degrees in the country. Malaysia launched an application build on top of the NEM blockchain, entitled E-Skrol, to resolve the issue of certificate fraud using blockchain.

Additionally, the Canadian tech institute, in June, was also looking to issue diplomas based on blockchain to its next graduating class. Over 4,800 graduating students from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology will receive their degree based on blockchain, along with the traditional parchments.

In a similar manner, the University of Bahrain had announced that it was going to collaborate with Learning Machine for providing blockchain diplomas.