(Kitco News) - Regardless of what many well-known financial analysts think, cryptocurrencies continue to gain ground when it comes to public awareness and are increasingly being considered a legitimate field to study for both high school and college students.
According to a recent survey conducted by Study.com, 64% of the parents polled think that crypto should be included in high school curriculums, while 67% of college graduates felt that crypto education should be compulsory.
The study, which focused on the U.S. population, included 884 parents with a mean age of 43 and 210 college graduates with a mean age of 36. To qualify for the study, the main criteria were having at least a basic understanding of cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and the metaverse.
Not surprisingly, the current investments held by the parents who were surveyed correlated with what they thought should be taught in schools, with 68% of parents indicating that they held crypto investments, which closely aligned with the 64% who thought the subject should be taught in schools.
One caveat to these findings is that the qualification of having basic crypto knowledge may have skewed the results more in favor of cryptocurrencies, as the results showed a higher crypto investment participation rate than other recent studies. “Perhaps our respondents' knowledge means they're more invested in crypto than the average person,” the authors said.
When it comes to which subjects blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies should replace in a school's curriculum, most parents indicated that they would rather have their children learn about crypto than design, architecture, and art history.
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College graduates see value in studying blockchain technology
As for how college grads feel about the potential advantages of crypto coursework, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive in favor of college courses on cryptocurrencies.
Similar to the parents who were surveyed, the majority of college grads who had crypto investments (73%) believed that cryptocurrency should be part of a student’s education (67%). More than one-third of respondents also thought that schools should incorporate the metaverse and blockchain into the curriculum. They were less enthusiastic about classes on NFTs, however.
Overall, “86% of college graduates think they would be making more money if they had formal knowledge of the new currencies and tech innovations on the internet instead of their college degree,” the study found. This could be due to the fact that in recent years, “some college grads are earning less than high school graduates.”
The main difference in opinion between parents and college grads revolves around what types of courses should be taught.
“College grads (49%) believed the most essential element of the curriculum would be information about "blue-chip" cryptos, while parents (46%) thought the history of crypto was most important,” the study said.
The one area that they did agree on was the reasoning behind educating kids about the blockchain, crypto, and the metaverse: “More than half wanted the next generation to learn about the future of our economy.”
