US Ivy League Wharton School to accept cryptocurrency payment for its online course
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The Philadelphia-based school, which is scheduled to open in January and is expected to attract thousands of students each year, offers its online blockchain and digital assets course at $3,800
The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the Ivy League institutions in the US, is planning to accept cryptocurrency as fee for its new executive education programme.
The premier business school will be accepting cryptocurrencies as a payment method for its online blockchain and digital assets programme.
Tuition for the “Economics of Blockchain and Digital Assets” programme can be paid in Bitcoin, Ether and USDC, according to the brochure. The six-week programme was developed in partnership with Prysm Group, a blockchain economic consulting firm.
The Philadelphia-based school, which is scheduled to open in January and is expected to attract thousands of students each year, offers the online course at $3,800.
The Wharton School is the latest to join the list of universities accepting cryptocurrencies. In May, the University of Pennsylvania received the largest cryptocurrency gift in its history, $5 million from an anonymous donor.
In 2014, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology famously gave out Bitcoin to its students in 2014. Other colleges have begun letting students use crypto to pay tuition.
A report in Bloomberg quoted Guido Molinari, the managing partner at Prysm Group, as saying, “It's a program about blockchain and digital assets, we felt that we should talk the talk and walk the walk.”
Wharton School has announced that it will use Coinbase Global Inc. to accept digital-asset payments. Coinbase Global Inc. is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US. The school is working with Prysm Group in order to develop the programme.
According to the programme’s brochure, PwC expects blockchain to boost global GDP by $1.8 trillion by 2030, indicating that the applications of this technology are only beginning to reveal themselves. In addition, Deloitte found that 83% of businesses are discussing or working on cryptocurrencies in the context of solutions or strategies.
The Wharton School has many notable alums who are actively involved in the cryptocurrency ecosystem..
Tesla CEO Elon Musk graduated from the school in 1997 and has been a strong force in driving price swings of meme coins like Dogecoin. He has also pushed his companies Tesla and SpaceX to buy Bitcoin for their corporate treasuries.
Another graduate from the school is Arthur Hayes, who started the BitMex exchange for Bitcoin exchanges.
Notably, the school doesn’t have any other plans to accept crypto.
(With inputs from agencies)