Blockchain in academia: Where do we stand and where do we go?

Abstract

Blockchain is an emerging exponential technology that disrupts the existing way of doing business. During the last 10 years its importance has been highlighted and many organizations worldwide have embraced it and developed innovative applications. Even though Blockchain has been adopted by many sectors, Universities are reluctant to propose new academic programs on this field at bachelor and postgraduate level and fail to efficiently educate students on Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. Consequently, universities have failed to investigate the business, technical, legal and other aspects of this technology. As a result, we have the paradox where industry and economy would like to experiment and adopt Blockchain solutions but there is a lack of people with appropriate and adequate skills to work on these solutions. Obviously, this holds back the adoption and the widespread of this technology and currently there are problems in scaling up Blockchain technology. The goal of this paper is to explore the area of Blockchain education and training and propose the structure of a master program that can be used as a model. In doing so, we expand the body of knowledge and we shed light to an important area with limited available information and use cases.