“A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers”, Helen Keller In the golden age of technology, the way we interact with both man and machine is evolv-ing at an exponential rate. Most of the crucial industries of the world are in a race tryevolv-ing to keep up with that rate, but education is one area that has historically been slow to evolve and continues to be the same (Matthew, 1964; Wang, 1975; Wildavsky et al., 2012). If history has taught us anything, it is that for the survival and evolution of an individual and human kind in general, innovation and adaptation with the changing surroundings is vital (Hoffman & Holzhuter, 2012). According to Crichton (2015), not much has changed in the way education is imparted in the last two decades. As such, it is critical that the acute need for transformation in the education sector is paid some attention on a global scale (Vieluf et al., 2012). Innovation in education has been described as a change in pedagogical theories, instruction tools, institutional structures or teaching and learning methods which eventually have positive outcomes for student learning (Serdyukov, 2017). The basic model of higher education has largely remained in the same crystalized structure as it was when it was first created for the masses during the Ford era of indus-trialization and mass production (Xing & Marwala, 2017; Rose, 2012; Jacobs, 2014). The purpose of such a model was to mass produce workers for factories. While the need for such labour has diminished to the extent of disappearance, the university structure has essentially remained the same.
When the concept of open universities and distance education was first introduced in the late 1960s and the 1980s respectively, it was simply categorized as a fad by most univer-sities. However, we have witnessed the rapid growth of both those sectors in the last few decades (Pant, 2014; Tait, 2018). The New York Times called 2012 the year of the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and it was prophesized by MOOC proponents that it will change education forever, but that did not materialize to the same extent (Pap-pano, 2012; Yousef et al., 2014). However, MOOCs were able to get the ball rolling on the conversation about education for all which is personalized, flexible and secure both for the learner and the universities. In the employment industry, big players such as Google, Facebook, Apple, E&Y and many others have already made it abundantly clear that they do not consider degree certificates as proof of a skill or competence and are more than willing to hire people based on a demonstrable competence, even when it is accompanied by simply a digital certificate (Glassdoor, 2018). Universities have finally taken notice of the fact that they need to improve their value proposition in order to remain relevant in the long run. In order to innovate the traditional education models, many uni-versities have considered various scenarios such as offering an extended curricula by
themselves or in collaboration with private MOOC providers which in a way unbundles their offering while complying with their internal quality assurance policies (Davis et al., 2014; Israel, 2015; EADTU, 2018). This has been one of the most common ways to un-bundle an aspect of the traditional higher education model. Unun-bundled education has been a debatable subject among researchers and thought leaders in the field of higher educa-tion. Apart from unbundling curricula, there have also been discussions regarding unbun-dling other aspects of higher education such as separation of course implementation and course assessment or more ambitious attempts like the concept of a ‘Multiversity’
(McCowan, 2017; Kerr, 1963). Even though it has both supporter and opponents, the potential unbundling offers in reinventing higher education is worth exploring.
Meanwhile, higher education has also been undergoing a huge wave of digitalization just like most other industries, with the advent of revolutionary, disruptive as well as founda-tional technologies. One such incumbent technology is blockchain. The hype surrounding blockchain, the underlying technology behind all major cryptocurrencies is one of the most extreme hype cycles our generation has witnessed, however blockchain technology has also been tapped as a foundation that can bring about social change (Galen et al., 2018). As pointed out by technology pundits, theoretically, blockchain can be applied to any field which involves transactions between two parties. The decentralized and immu-table nature of blockchain have been predicted to be the unique selling point for it when it comes to the education sector (Camilleri & Grech, 2017).
However, there has been a relevant lack of empirical research when it comes to using blockchain for education. Apart from that, there are also very few use cases that might help researchers to understand the extent and consequences of using blockchain technol-ogy in the field of education. To the best of my knowledge, there is no research yet avail-able that specifically links the use of blockchain technology to unbundling aspects of higher education. This thesis is an attempt to cover up this research gap. In this Thesis, I will try to explore the implications of blockchain technology in the field of higher educa-tion, specifically related to the idea of unbundling higher education. The main research question is as follows
Can blockchain technology facilitate the unbundling of higher education?
The rest of the thesis is an attempt to answer the above question. It has been divided into seven chapters. Chapters 2, and 3 are based on a literature review that was undertaken in order to understand unbundling of higher education and blockchain technology inde-pendently. Chapter 2 introduces the elementary background of the concept of unbundling in the context of higher education where the change drivers responsible for its forethought and the apparent barriers in its implementation have been studied based on the existing literature available. In chapter 3, the theoretical background related to blockchain tech-nology including its intrinsic elements and characteristics have been explained. In chapter
4, a link has been drawn between unbundling of higher education and the use of block-chain technology to achieve that based on the analysis of the results of chapter 2 and 3 and including the current use cases available. Chapter 5 explains the research methodol-ogy used in this research process. Chapter 6 analyses the results obtained from the data collected via semi structured qualitative interviews. Chapter 7 summarizes the results of the research process and identifies the barriers in the adoption of blockchain technology if it was to be used in the field of higher education. Finally, chapter 8 concludes the re-search process with some final statements.