Cryptocurrency education in high school

CRYPTOCURRENCY EDUCATION

Union Catholic Regional High School in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, proudly displays the following motto on its main building: "Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow."

Sister Percylee Hart has been stewarding the school into the future ever since she became principal 38 years ago. In 1980, she merged Union Catholic's separate boys and girls schools, turning the high school co-educational.

Now, in 2018, Union Catholic is teaching its juniors and seniors about cryptocurrencies.

The class, an elective available to juniors and seniors, covers topics like earning money, budgeting, credit cards, taxes, investing, entrepreneurship and how to create a business plan.

With the approval of the administration, Breza has now added a section on cryptocurrencies, focusing on the history of cryptography and the applications of blockchain technology.

But while cryptography may be new to high schools, it's already a popular topic at colleges across the country.

Dan Boneh, a professor of cryptography at Stanford, told CNBC last year that security and cryptography represent the second-most popular subject in the university's computer science department, behind only machine learning.

LinkedIn says there are now 28 times as many people citing cryptocurrency skills on their profiles and 5.5 times as many people with bitcoin skills as there were in October 2013.