Wharton To Accept Crypto As Tuition Payment For Blockchain Class

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania's new executive education program will accept coins such as Bitcoin as one method of payment.

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the nation's premier business schools, plan to accept cryptocurrency as tuition for its online blockchain and digital assets program.

The Ivy League institution's new executive education program will accept coins such as Bitcoin as one method of payment. Due to start in January, the online course offered by the Philadelphia-based school costs $3,800 and is expected to attract several thousand students per year.

"It's a program about blockchain and digital assets, we felt that we should talk the talk and walk the walk," Guido Molinari, managing partner a Prysm Group, which is working with Wharton to develop the program, said in an interview. Wharton will use Coinbase Global Inc., the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, to accept digital-asset payments.

Over the years, there have been many university experiments with cryptocurrencies: Massachusetts Institute of Technology famously gave out Bitcoin to its students in 2014. Other colleges have begun letting students use crypto to pay tuition.