The University of Pennsylvania to Accept Tuition Fees in Digital Currencies

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is set to accept digital currencies as tuition fee payments for its newly flagged course on blockchain and digital currencies. As the school unveiled in a statement, the six-week program dubbed, “Economics of Blockchain and Digital Assets” course for “business and technology professionals seeking to learn about blockchain and digital assets through its value-driving principle: economics,” will begin in January 2022.

The Ivy League school is living up to its embrace of open education into digital assets, and it is going all out with its permission to pay in digital currencies. As revealed by the school, the accepted cryptocurrencies include Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and USD Coin (USDC), and the payments will be facilitated by Nasdaq-listed trading platform, Coinbase Global Inc.

“We designed this program for business professionals and executives from a range of backgrounds, including traditional finance, management, and tech,” said the program’s academic director, Wharton professor, and blockchain author Kevin Werbach. 

Wharton School noted that it will be the first Ivy League school to trail this path, and in addition to the digital currency payments, students who wish to enroll for the course will also have other flexible options including Paypal and credit with which to pay for the course.

The University of Pennsylvania is Rebranding Crypto Utility

Digital currencies are now being accepted by various business outfits around the world. The United States of America is perhaps leading the charge in relation to the number of vendors that are now accepting Bitcoin, and the other dominant digital currencies. The embrace of crypto by payments giant Paypal notably helped in the upward push of the nascent asset class as a payment option across its merchant network.

The acceptance of crypto by the University of Pennsylvania is a more direct way to bolster the general utilities surrounding cryptocurrencies. The move from the school takes its backing from King’s College in New York, the tertiary institution in America that began the practice back in 2014. 

The crypto ecosystem generated a reasonable amount of buzz in the past year, and with growing government intervention in rolling out policies, we may begin to see even more moves from institutions and businesses in the near future.