San Francisco based Holberton School of software engineering begins using public blockchain to record, verify and track student credentials.

The educational institution announced on October 2015 that it has become the world's first school to deliver academic certificates secured and accessible via the blockchain. It also said that this ensures high-quality certificate recognition for Holberton School students and tackling the threats of false resumes and fake certificates.

The school also announced a partnership with Bitproof, a startup specialized in documents certification in the blockchain. Bitproof is an online blockchain notary that delivers cryptographic timestamped proofs of integrity using the blockchain technology. 

A press release by HireRight exposed a candidate who lied on the resume. To solve such struggles that companies face, Holberton School has chose to store students records through blockchain. "Lying about education credentials is a common problem, and today it is very easy to counterfeit academic diplomas and certificates," said Blake Haggerty, recruiter at CoreOS in the press release. He added that, "In addition, the process to check someone's degree is quite laborious, as you need to get the school's contact information, reach the right person and do it again for every candidate. Medium and big companies often delegate this task to third parties as it is very time and money consuming."

By using this blockchain technology, the school saves money by not having to build and operate its own database of records. Sylvain Kalache, co-founder of the school told the bitcoin magazine that, “For employers, it avoids having them spend valuable time checking candidates’ educational credentials by having to call universities or to pay a third party to do the job.”

It would be a huge responsibility to build and maintain an infrastructure that cannot be altered or that does not go down making the data always available. But this can be achieved free of cost by blockchain technology.

Talking about the students reaction to this new technology, Kalache said that, “Our students are very happy about the fact that their academic qualifications will be secure in the storage of the future.” He also added that, “They also see how the industry is massively investing in the blockchain, and they are proud to be part of the school that was the first to use it.”

Apart from Holberton School, The University of Nicosia in Cyprus is also turning its attention to blockchain technology for recording students’ achievements. This university has the first set of students graduating in June with an MSc in Digital Currency and is helping other universities to incorporate blockchain technology.