TrustED Solves the Academic Credentials Verification Problem
Each of you might have faced with the inconveniences associated with the process of verification of the academic credentials.
The current system of credential verification is slow, inaccurate and ineffective, and this can simply be observed in high profile cases of resume fraud. Take for instance, the former CEO of Yahoo, Scott Thompson, who has a degree in accounting, but for 10 years claimed in his resume that it was a degree in computer science, from a university that did not even offer a computer science program until four years after Thompson graduated. Similarly, a respected and popular professor, David Scott Broxterman, held a position which required a doctorate, and was paid a total sum of $258,760 during a five-year tenure. As a result, the State Attorney’s office labelled that money as ‘stolen wage’ because of his falsified doctoral documents. Another famous example is of Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at MIT, who had misrepresented her academic credentials and was consequently forced to resign.
Given the nature and physical form of academic credentials, they are always vulnerable to forgery, and the intensity of incidents related to facts distortion and fraud in credentials are numerous. A recent survey of around 5000 resumes conducted by the Risk Advisory Group concluded that 80% of CV’s contained some form of discrepancies, with 57% of these discrepancies being academic background related and 12% of CV’s containing outright falsified grades (Risk Advisory, 2017).
Let’s take a closer look to the main problems with the current process. What are these problems?
• Risk of Fraud
With access to a simple photo editing software, it’s extremely easy to fraudulently edit or produce an academic credential.
• System Downtime
Academic Credentials which are stored digitally are stored on centralized servers. Centralized servers are prone to system downtime due to maintenance or malfunction, potentially limiting the access to academic credentials.
• Migration
With an ever expanding and migrating population, the current system provides no viable solution for confirming the academic credentials of employees or students migrating from abroad.
• Timely verification Process
Verifying academic credentials is a timely process. Verifiers are required to contact the institution and confirm the legitimacy, this can lead verifiers to completely neglect to verify the credentials at all.
• Ceasing Operations
Moody’s Investor Service recorded that one third of Private American Educational Institutions generated operating deficits in 2016. With the increased risk that these institutions may eventually cease operations, comes risk that an employer in the distant future may be unable to verify and authenticate one’s credentials, as the institution is no longer contactable.
• Paper Copies
In a digitalized world, where almost everything amongst us is in digital form, our certificates and achievements are still issued in paper copies. This poses no sustainability to the environment, or the costs associated with printing.
As you can see, the problems are quite acute. To ensure that such problems will not occur in the future we decided to look further into the industry and realized that blockchain and crypto technologies go hand in hand with academic accreditation. Finally, we have found a solution.
TrustED is an application which leverages blockchain technology to allow academic institutions such as universities or trade schools to store, authenticate and issue any form of academic credential or certificate digitally to its recipients.Through TrustED it’s impossible to fake academic credentials due to the nature of blockchain technology.
TrustED prevents academic fraud and allows an instant peer to peer authentication of academic credentials whilst also eliminating the current lengthy process associated with having to manually issue and verify the academic credentials of prospective individuals.
Our goal is to turn TrustED into the industry standard for certificate accreditation. A go to portal and a global decentralized database containing every single certificate or academic credential one ever receives. When an employee attends a job interview, we don’t want them having to worry about carrying their paper diploma with them, and when an employer interviews a job candidate we want them to be able to instantly view and verify their academic credentials and achievements.
Putting back the trust to education together!
