Singapore Tackles Forged Degrees with Blockchain Technology

Review Revise Renew (RRR) Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based firm has announced plans to develop a distributed ledger technology (DLT) based solution that will permanently solve the problem of fake degrees and enable firms to hire the most qualified candidate, reports Digital Journal on September 23, 2019.

RRR Eliminating Fake Degrees with DLT

In a bid to permanently eliminate the menace of fake degrees and enable companies to hire the best and most qualified workers, Review Revise Renew (RRR), a Singaporean startup incorporated in the country in September 2017, is developing a blockchain-based platform.

In an interview with Digital Journal, Dennis Ba, the founder of RRR stated that the problem of fake degrees and certificates has proven to be an unsolved mystery for both governments and private firms alike for several decades now.

Ba says the menace of fake degrees have continued to plague the world due to the lack of transparent and highly functional certificate verification platforms that allows employers to easily validate the certificates submitted to them by prospective employees.

The 37-year-old entrepreneur also opined that it has become quite easy for rogue actors to purchase fake degrees or certificates from private institutions, a situation that gifts unskilled workers with job positions they know little or nothing about.

Blockchain to the Rescue

According to Agency Central, a U.K.-based firm that connects job seekers with their dream jobs, fake degrees are now a multi-billion dollar industry, causing serious problems to both employers and recruitment agencies.

In 2017, Higher Education Degree Datacheck (Hedd) fished out 220 fake institutions of higher learning selling fake degree courses and non-existent courses.

To fix the problem of fake degrees and certificates, RRR has hinted that it plans to build a blockchain-powered ecosystem that would be made up of government-accredited schools, students and companies looking to hire employees that are genuinely qualified for their vacant positions.

Ba has also made it clear that the entire academic activities that students undertake right from the time they are admitted into a school to the point of graduation, including projects, tasks, attendance, grades and others, will be stored on an immutable distributed ledger.

This way, firms will be able to easily verify the credentials of prospective employees on the RRR platform and HR departments will also be able to grade newly hired employees in a transparent way.

In related news, earlier in February 2019, BTCManager informed that the Maltese government were hatching plans to issue all educational certificates on the blockchain, in a bid to curb unlawful activities.