According to a report by CBS, the New York University (NYU) has become the first American university to ofeer students major in the nascent technology. The prestigious Stern School of Business at NYU will be in charge of the programme. The school was the first to offer undergraduate courses in digital currencies and distributed ledger tech.

According to professor Andrew Hinkes, “We hope to establish a groundwork so that the students can understand what’s really happening under the hood, so that they can understand both the legal and the business implications, and prepare them to go out and tackle this new market.“

A number of business schools have taken notice of the increased student interest in crypto and blockchain and have followed the path, set by the Stern school. Adam White, vice president and general manager at Coinbase said that “This is a grassroots movement. These are students saying, ‘hey, university, I want to take a class on this.’ I think they see the development, the birth of a new industry. In many ways, we look at things like Bitcoin and Ethereum and blockchain as the internet 3.0.“

Universities now offering crypto courses, include world-class institutions like Stanford and MIT and the demand for blockchain-related classes has increased exponentially. A recent Coinbase study found out that 42 percent of the world’s top 50 universities already offer at least one course on virtual currencies or blockchain. 9 percent of the 675 surveyed students told they had already taken a crypto-related class. Furthermore, 18 percent of surveyed students said they own or have owned cryptocurrency. This is twice as much as the general US population, suggesting students are more open to adopting digital assets.

Kathleen Derose, associate professor at NYU has added that “The big established companies will definitely be partners in this whole equation, while the startups in financial technology will likely invent the new cool stuff.”

This has already proven to be the case, as technology giant IBM has teamed up with the Columbia University to launch a blockchain research centre back in July. The new facility is located in Manhattan and the top students are already working there in tandem with IBM specialists to learn about blockchain solutions on an enterprise level.

The first crypto major programme at NYU is expected to pave the way for other universities to introduce their own crypto majors. David Yermack, finance department chair at NYU claimed that these courses are even popular among the alumni, as, “There are a few people who graduated some years ago but have come back to sit in on this just because of the novelty and the edginess of the topic.“

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