A Permissioned Blockchain-Based System for Verification of Academic Records

Abstract

While academic institutions maintain records such as transcripts and certificates, they are often requested to share these records with other institutions at the request of students for credit transfer, or prerequisites for acceptance into new academic programs. While the transfer of academic records is a regular daily activity for the institutions, there is often significant overhead involved as the process of transfer and verification is extremely manual. The need for an automated end-to-end solution for the transfer and verification of academic records between institutions is on the edge to reduce wait times for students to transfer their records, as well as to provide a reliable verification method to avoid academic fraud. This paper presents a permissioned blockchain-based system to allow institutions to securely and dependably transfer and verify academic records at the student request. Permissioned blockchains, such as Hyperledger, provide a more scalable and cost-effective and private solution for enterprise applications. Our solution is comprised of a web interface for enrolling and requesting the transfer, with a backend using Hyperledger Fabric and Hyperledger Composer to retain the hash of the records on the blockchain for verification.