The Malaysian Ministry of Education (MoE) is establishing a University Consortium to combat degree fraud using blockchain, announced the ministry in a tweet on Nov. 8.
According to the ministry's tweet, the system is designed to issue and verify the authenticity of university degrees. The new government-backed consortium will initially comprise six public universities and its diploma verification system is set to operate using the NEM (XEM) blockchain. According to the ministry, the new system was developed by a team led by a professor from the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM).
According to one of the local media, the idea of ​​the consortium was proposed by the MoE to preserve the reputation and integrity of Malaysian universities, protect the rights of students and promote distributed ledger technology (DLT).
The MoE told the media that the main purpose behind establishing the consortium is to "spread skills training" as well as develop and adopt the technology by students and academics. In the long term, the ministry noted that it is also considering the development of what it called "industry standard" blockchain solutions that could generate revenue for the Consortium's member universities.
Recently, a state-backed Russian university announced that it would store diploma data on the blockchain, claiming that the institution has already recorded the information of “all diplomas issued in the last ten years” using DLT.
In October last year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) became the first university in the world to issue digital diplomas by implementing blockchain technology.