The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the most popular business schools in the world, has added an online course on financial technologies, including digital currencies.
According to its press release, the online course would be called FinTech: Foundations and Applications of Financial Technologies.” It would reportedly include topics and case studies on aspects such as blockchain technology, online payments, cryptocurrencies, and crowdfunding.
The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Source
In addition to the standard university lectures, the course is also set to feature conferences and speeches by top executives from the FinTech industry, including investment and financial services provider Vanguard, market lender CommonBond, and online payment processing service Square.
Speaking on the course’s launch, various faculty officials touted the FinTech as the future of the finance industry. They added that Wharton as a learning institution has always been committed to blazing the trail, and with the FinTech specialization, they get to leverage the “knowledge of our renowned Wharton faculty providing real-world knowledge to the benefit of learners around the globe.”
Joining the fold
With this course, Wharton is joining an ever-increasing list of educational institutions to introduce FinTech and blockchain courses to their formal curricula.
Last year, Australian blockchain education body Blockchain Collective launched the Advanced Diploma of Applied Blockchain, a course taught across various training institutions in the country. The Blockchain Diploma covers 8 modules; including 2 electives and 6-course modules.
It is expected to take students through ten objectives, all of which will help expose them to various real-life experiences, including blockchain companies’ performance and how to help businesses migrate from traditional modules to blockchain-based networks.
Also, the University of Tokyo announced in December that it would be offering a blockchain course. In a statement, the university explained that the course- dubbed the “Blockchain Innovation Donation Course”- would focus on real-life applications of blockchain technology.
Last year, crypto exchange Coinbase reported that about 42 percent of the world’s top 50 universities are now offering at least one cryptocurrency or blockchain course. The company claimed to have surveyed up to 675 U.S.-based universities, 50 other international institutions, and numerous lecturers and students.
Per the report, institutions such as Cornell University, Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and much more already offer more than one blockchain course. The courses were also said to cover much more than just computer science.
In part, the report states, “In fact, the rise in offerings across disciplines maps to student interest: Students with a diverse set of majors say they’d like to take cryptocurrency classes… nearly half of all social science majors expressed interest in taking a crypto class.”
The demand for education is still not satiated
Despite the best efforts of Universities to offer blockchain related courses, it seems not to be enough. In December 2018, eToro US, the United States division of social trading services provider eToro published a survey report which confirmed that there is still a significant demand for cryptocurrency education amongst American citizens.
Per the report, an astounding 69 percent of respondents in the survey said that they were interested in getting a decent education concerning crypto assets. Also, 75 percent of the respondents who didn’t own any assets- as well as 20 percent of those who own an asset or the other- claimed to have known nothing about cryptocurrencies in general.
Almost half of the people who reported not to know anything about cryptocurrencies also claimed that this ignorance was the most significant reason why they hadn’t made any cryptocurrency investments yet.
