This is the 1st part of a short 3 piece series, where a co-founder of BitDegree, Danielius Stasiulis, shares his views on why Blockchain will reinvent Education.

I’d like to set the scene for what comes next with a masterpiece by Pink Floyd.

The current education system is driven by FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). Anyone who deviates from the perfect student and wants to become an economically useful member of the society has their chances crushed. By this I mean — finding a job and earning income that allows a decent life becomes significantly harder. That’s why parents, driven by fear, dictate their children to study as hard as they can or else, rumors are, they’ll be unemployed and useless.

It does not help that even being a perfect student does not guarantee anyone a good job. The current education system cannot guarantee anything beyond that if you study well, you’ll get a nice piece of paper, called a diploma. Especially, the higher education is all about uncertainty. Universities and colleges “sell the degrees” that are appealing to students’ parents and the society at large, resulting in more jobless lawyers, bankers, managers, etc. This is how today’s employers are getting tricked by this current education system — they need digitally savvy specialists (coders, UX specialists, social media managers, etc.) and instead get the talent that is prepared for the past century and is out of demand. Education-employment system is broken, there is no social contract to fix it and the victim here is a student, who is left with nothing but uncertainty.

Doubt is the modus operandi of any student — “what studies should I choose?”, “whom should I become?”, “am I studying what I like?”, “do I do what I like?”, etc. Confined by fear and uncertainty as explained in the paragraphs above, students get a terrible learning experience.

There is a need for a social contract to fix the issue of FUD in the education-employment system… and with today’s technologies, especially blockchain, we can do it!

Actually, there are three problems that need to be fixed in Education:

Problem 1. FUD (or the need to eliminate hope and trust in education).

A student trusts the higher education institution that it will provide him with: 1) a profession that is desired by the employers, 2) skills and knowledge that is sufficient to do the job. The student hopes that his choice of profession and education will grant him the economic opportunities he wishes for.

the higher education institution that it will provide him with: 1) a profession that is desired by the employers, 2) skills and knowledge that is sufficient to do the job. The student that his choice of profession and education will grant him the economic opportunities he wishes for. Employers hope that the higher education institutions will provide them with the talent they need.

that the higher education institutions will provide them with the talent they need. Higher education institutions hope to sell enough degrees so that they can sustain or grow their operations. Unfortunately, it’s a buyers’ market and the buyers don’t buy what is reasonable as they do not have the collective intelligence on what skills and professions are demanded by the employers.

Solution 1. Blockchain-based educentives (incentives for education)

Instead of orchestrating the education-employment system in the top-down approach by a number of intermediaries (Ministry of Education and their subordinates), it is possible to eliminate those intermediaries if a bottom-up approach is chosen.

An educentive underwrites a social contract between an employer, who needs talent with the skill X, the student who agrees to obtain the skill X for the incentive Y and the educator who agrees to teach the skill X for the incentive less than Y.

Collectively, these educentives can amount to a self-organizing education-employment system without intermediaries, driven by the supply and demand. Think of it as the Google AdWords-like system for skilled talent, educating and employment.

Problem 2. Failure of centralized systems

Failure to produce the talent that is needed by the employers and coordinate the supply-demand in education through higher education institutions.

All except for the top 1% of higher education institutions fail (actually, it’s not even economically possible) to have up-to-date knowledge and teaching methods yet succeed in “selling degrees”.

Solution 2. Decentralized, community-driven platform with a token economy (educentives)

Employment opportunities are created and filled in a free market fashion. However, education of skills is not. Educentives enable free market in education at the most granular level.

Because of the free market in education, it is then possible to create and maintain knowledge and teaching methods that are the most valued by the employers and learners. Bad courses or boring teaching methods will simply be inferior to the good ones. Moreover, because all of this will happen through blockchain-based contracts, the ratings of quality will be immutable and trustless.

It is near to impossible to change the brick and mortar education system. However, the rise and global presence of social networks create an opportunity for the creation of the best online education platform imaginable, driven by the community. And because of the educentives, this platform will have its stakeholders incentivized by the economic opportunities. In Wikipedia, people contribute because they have a social mission, imagine what would happen if they would have an economic interest in addition to that.

Problem 3. Unavailable and unaffordable education

A big part of the world, over 1 billion people, still don’t have access to education.

For the majority of the world higher education is unaffordable. Even in the developed countries, the cost of higher education has skyrocketed, leaving the diploma holders in debt for years.

Offline education is outdated, and inferior compared to online.

Solution 3. Global, democratic education that pays you to learn and provides job opportunities

While quality education system might still not be in place in many countries, internet connectivity is on the rise and is soon to cover the globe. This creates an opportunity for the education to reach learners globally over the internet.

Online education is infinitely scalable if designed right. We no longer need to stick to the classroom setting. This enables to reduce the cost of education at the very least tenfold and, in some cases, to zero.

If considering the disparity between the demand and supply of talent in the labor market, an opportunity to sponsor education emerges. What if employers would pay to educate the talent the skills and educations they need? I’m not talking about simply sponsoring education. The disparity is so large and the economic opportunity so big that it is actually possible to pay students to learn. Learning can be their full-time job, covering their living expenses.

Online education is a global opportunity. Similarly to how freelancer websites work, so can the education platform connect employers with learners who are ready to learn the skill needed. Too many people in the developing countries, learning those digital skills that are in demand in the global economy through “learn and earn” model, is an opportunity to substitute their unskilled work for full-time learning at no expense to their income and a chance to increase it by employing the new skills.

Lastly, online education does not have to be boring. It does not have to resemble the offline education at all. Why can’t it be more like computer games?

Games are the opposite to FUD. Any self-respecting young person has indulged themselves into an occasional gaming experience. Games are fun and engaging. The brick and mortar schools, universities and colleges are hard to gamify, but the online education certainly can be. I believe that MMORPG like courses can be the future of online education — take quests, learn, gain points, join clans, socialize, upgrade, engage, achieve!

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