Ivy League students in the United States can now get into an exclusive, intensive blockchain program, and, if they’re so inclined, pay their tuition in Bitcoin.
Erhan Kahraman at Cointelegraph reports on Wharton Business School in Pennsylvania offering a six week course in exchange for one fraction of an individual Bitcoin worth about $3800.
The full stack for Wharton’s end-to-end crypto program involves Coinbase Commerce as the vehicle for crypto payment, and Coursera as a classroom platform.
Kahraman reports this project comes after Wharton recently received an individual donation of around 118 Bitcoin.
“The Wharton School reportedly exchanged the donation to fiat immediately, which would be worth more than $7 million at the time of writing,” Kahraman writes.
Wharton isn’t the only school in the world to accept cryptocurrency for tuition. Early adopters include Nicosia University in Cyprus, King’s College in New York, and Financia business School in France.
And although Princeton, Harvard and other Ivy League schools are not currently accepting Bitcoin for tuition payments, they are starting to purchase cryptocurrency through their endowments
“According to sources familiar with the matter, a number of Ivy League universities including the University of Michigan, Brown, Yale, and Harvard endowments have been discreetly purchasing cryptocurrencies,” wrote Jamie Redman at Botcoin.com near the beginning of this year. “The prominent schools have been reportedly leveraging exchanges like Coinbase and other trading platforms. Prominent university endowments have been quietly purchasing digital currencies according to a report written by the financial columnist Ian Allison. The reporters detailed that “two sources” have explained that a number of well-known colleges have been purchasing digital currencies from specific exchanges like Coinbase.”
From buying their own cryptocurrency, it’s only a small step to enabling students to pay with cryptocurrency – it’s essentially an administrative task. So Wharton’s bid might become more the norm in the very near future.
