Expedition to the blockchain application potential for higher education institutions

In the education sector, blockchain is currently at the end of the peak of inflated expectations in Gartner’s Hype Cycle. Thus, it is crucial to understand whether this technology meets the expectations of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). We go on an expedition to identify blockchain application scenarios and its potential for HEI administration—the universities are digitalized to just 23.3%.

Current information systems research addresses classifications of blockchain-based projects (application level) rather than their technical realization (protocol level). Thus, when evaluating blockchain application scenarios in HEI administration, we intensively consider the technical side of blockchain-based projects. We perform a three-step approach: (1) systematic literature review, (2) qualitative exploratory semi-structured interviews to supplement information on market-ready solutions, and (3) an evaluation of the potential of the blockchain-based projects identified, based on HEI administration requirements.

We find that the leading blockchain application scenarios are credential verification and record-sharing. At the protocol level, we obtain equivocal results regarding the technical realization of projects, e.g., their underlying blockchain types and storage models. At the application level, when discussing the potential of different projects, we find that most of them address adaptability, complexity decomposition, and cost reduction requirements between HEIs; interest diversity and stakeholder collaboration between HEIs and business actors; privacy and trust between HEIs and students.