Growing interest in blockchain courses in universities

Blockchain and cryptocurrency courses are growing in popularity worldwide, if the recent report by Coinbase is anything to go by. 

Findings from the second annual report by the cryptocurrency trading platform found that 56 percent of the top global universities now offer one or more courses on cryptocurrency or blockchain, compared to 42 percent last year.

Coinbase said they reviewed the course catalogues of the top 50 global universities, as ranked by US News and World Report. Their study focused on classes available to undergraduate and graduate-level students in 2019, for which information was available online.

They found that cryptocurrency and blockchain classes are taught in a wide variety of departments. Computer science classes are most common, accounting for 32.2 percent; finance, business and economics classes collectively tally 19.8 percent; while the figure is 10.7 percent for law-school classes.

Coinbase’s top 10 leaders in cryptocurrency education comprises of six American universities, two Swiss universities and one Danish institution. At number 10, Singapore is the only Asian country to make the list.

Coinbase’s top 10 leaders in cryptocurrency education

RANK UNIVERSITY COUNTRY
1 Cornell University US
2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) US
3 New York University (NYU) US
4 Stanford University US
5 École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne Switzerland
6 University of California Berkeley US
7 Columbia University US
8 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich Switzerland
9 University of Copenhagen Denmark
10 National University of Singapore (NUS) Singapore

More students show an interest in studying cryptocurrency or blockchain 

Students are interested in learning about how cryptocurrency and blockchain can benefit people. Source: Coinbase

Their research also found that 34 percent of students surveyed expressed interest in taking a course on crypto or blockchain, compared to just 28 percent last year. And twice as many (18 percent) report having taken a class on the topic, compared to the number reported from 2018.

Students are also increasingly interested in learning how blockchain and crypto can benefit people all over the world. 

Coinbase notes that interest in learning about blockchain and “social justice” rose from 13 percent to 20 percent between 2018 and 2019. 

Meanwhile, student interest in learning about “security” and “future applications and growth” both declined in the past year, from 37 percent to 29 percent and from 31 percent to 27 percent.

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