Students Flood Blockchain Courses

Cryptocurrencies and blockchain are being added into the curriculum in many elite universities across the US, reported the New York Times.

Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Duke, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Maryland, among others, have added graduate-level courses on the topic this semester. Berkeley boasts its own course named “Blockchain, Cryptoeconomics and the Future of Technology, Business and Law”, with students lining the walls and sitting in the isles.

A professor teaching the class at Berkeley, Greg La Blanc, told the students to forgive occasional errors, saying, “We aren’t waiting until we perfect it. Don’t compare it to the perfect blockchain course. Compare it to having no blockchain course at all.” A total of 75 places in the class were divided evenly among the law school, business school and the engineering department, with around 100 engineers vying for the 25 spots set aside for them, according to professor Dawn Song.

Professor Campbell Harvey of Duke’s business school, teaching a class with a stunning 231 students this semester, said, “The students in my class are from every possible discipline. They understand that this is going to disrupt many different areas of business, and they want to be the disrupters, not the disruptees.”

Students were quicker to catch up on the need to teach about blockchain than their professors, though: Berkeley students have even created a campus club that offers multiple courses on blockchain technology, taught by the students themselves.