“We believe in learning by doing, and so to help inform our courses on complementary currencies, we are trialling the acceptance of them”

The Certificate of Achievement in Sustainable Exchange and the Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Leadership will examine the role of complementary currencies in economic and social systems. The courses will cost £3,333 (around 5.7 Bitcoins) and £1,111 (around two Bitcoins) respectively.

The founder and director of IFLAS, Professor Jem Bendell, explained: “We are accepting Bitcoin as a way of experimenting [with] how it works for a major organisation with many departments.”

“We believe in learning by doing, and so to help inform our courses on complementary currencies, we are trialling the acceptance of them,” he added.

A spokesperson told The PIE News that due to the initiative’s recent introduction, no students have yet registered for Bitcoin payments, and that the university has no targets for payments using the e-currency.

She added that international students may benefit most from using Bitcoin as it will enable them to save on transaction fees.

However, in a statement, the university advised students against buying Bitcoin to pay their fees, owing to the risk of currency volatility, encouraging only those who already own some of the currency to use it for tuition payments.

This follows an announcement last year that the University of Nicosia (UNic) in Cyprus was the first accredited university in the world to accept Bitcoin for fee payments for all of its courses. UNic, the largest private university in Cyprus, will offer a Master’s of Science in Digital Currency online and on campus from spring 2014 onwards, with the first class available as a free, “open enrolment, MOOC-like course”.

“We are acutely aware that digital currency is an inevitable technical development that will lead to significant innovation”

“We are acutely aware that digital currency is an inevitable technical development that will lead to significant innovation,” Dr. Christos Vlachos, UNic’s chief financial officer, said in November.

The two universities join language school A2Z School of English, which started accepting Bitcoin payments last year, in becoming some of the world’s first education providers to embrace the digital currency.