@ Dug

Let’s begin with a simple question, why do students go to a business school? Other than the obvious of not really knowing what they want to do in the future and thinking they will at least be able to get a graduate job of some type when they leave. The difficulty for business schools is then how to develop and deliver an education that provides students with a general overview of important topics of a modern business, finance, accounting, human resources, economics, marketing and a variety of other management topics, such as operations, sustainability and analytics, to name a few, that remains up to date. Not only have difficulties emerged recently with the advent of easily accessible large language models making the life of an unscrupulous student easier and the life of the diligent lecturer more difficult, but the whole nature of business is continually changing. Why learn about operations, if I can get all I need from some dark factory overseas? Why put together a marketing plan for my business, when anyone with a following can sell all the products they want with a single post? Why learn about the nuances of accounting theory when a) you’ll need to go through formal training irrespective of the degree the student earned, and b) the job may soon no longer exist as a result of AI based automation?

While a touch dark, these are questions that need to be asked within business schools today to ensure that 18 and 19 year olds, entering university, preparing to saddle themselves with upwards of £30,000 worth of debt, are not making a massive, expensive mistake. While there are the benefits related to the social and maturing process of attending university, the cost of university has forever changed this calculation for most, other than the most privileged and wealthy students. Compared to 20 years ago, taking a few years out and then starting a job made sense, where living expensive could be covered by a combination of loans, part time work and help from parents, with resources left over to a little fun. If the above questions are valid, attending university for 3 years, and then potentially feeling the need to also complete a postgraduate degree to “set yourself apart”, what you actually come out of university with needs to be given a lot of attention. As someone who has taught in university for over 10 years, I’ve seen both changes in the business environment and how students engage with studies have changed. Putting it simply, many are more focused on making ends meet than learning anything, meaning many will take any opportunity to save a little time on a piece of coursework, just to get a pass, e.g. asking chatgpt to write a 3000-word essay on “X” topic.

For me, this has resulted in students with more focus upon “getting a good degree”, than engaging in learning, meaning every short cut is taken and the drive to come out of university as a better person appears, at least partially, lost. From finding out about bitcoin a little over 5 years ago, and studying it rather intently for the last 2 and a half, I think it represents a critical subject for helping Business Schools remain relevant. Bitcoin is emerging as potentially the most important economic innovation ever, and the most rapidly growing asset in history, but it appears looked down upon in the school I work. Whether off hand comments in department meetings of “pay me in bitcoin” (followed by muffled laughter), “students only want to do research projects on ‘cryptocurrencies’” said condescendingly by an economics lecturer or published work clearly stating “we find empirical evidence that the fundamental price of Bitcoin is zero”. If people outside academia worry that universities are becoming indoctrination institutions, training young people not to investigate new topics, these views of academics are unlikely to provide an environment for a balanced, open discussion.

While I would not want to paint all members of the business school where I work with the same broad brush, I would a) be extremely interested to know how many modules make reference to bitcoin, b) how many members of staff are aware of bitcoin and c) how many have actually read the bitcoin white paper. While I wouldn’t want to make any assumptions, I would not be surprised if the responses to b) were magnitudes greater than the responses to a) and c) combined. If this is the case, the question is then raised of why this is relevant and what the students are likely missing out on by not providing them with education on this emerging topic. Importantly, this does not mean education on the thousands of new cryptocurrency projects that are released on a daily basis, just education of bitcoin, bitcoin was the first, it is the most valuable by market cap, it is the innovation, everything else doesn’t warrant attention.

Firstly, to reflect on bitcoin having a value of zero, if a student graduating university in 2025 spent their first year’s tuition fees on bitcoin (Fees approximately £9,000, bitcoin approximately £16,000 in Sept 2022), they would have been able to purchase 0.55btc. By 13-05-2025 (2 months before graduation), that same purchase would be worth over £45,000, very much non-zero. While this may be viewed by some as an example that only a high-risk gambler would pursue, a similar argument could be made for a student spending £30k (plus living expenses) to study a subject they likely didn’t fully understand, to hopefully secure a job to pay back that loan in 3 years time. However, saying that, if the student had bought bitcoin when it was higher (September 2021, so buying 0.23btc) by graduation in July 2024, there bitcoin would ONLY be worth a little over £12k (still greater than the initial investment and more than zero). However, as someone who believes in the value of education, I’m not going to tell my children or anyone of university age to take out a student loan and buy bitcoin with it, apart from likely being illegal, and at least “not in line with their intended use”.

The old man academic curmudgeon in me would suggest that the student go and learn a craft, that will have value in the future, becoming a plumber, an electrician or a carpenter, while learning about bitcoin on the side. However, after 15 years from the age of 4, being fed state sponsored indoctrination that “all the smart kids go to university”, putting such pressure on a young person may appear unkind, if ultimately “good for them”. So, what options might an academically competent individual have when they leave school and may want to keep studying? This might be where a university’s business school may be able to step in, although in my opinion, every effort must be made to reduce costs, while also increasing value of the experience. Spending money given to children (by government) for their education on administrative staff and new buildings that don’t benefit students, not to mention lecture theatres and seminar rooms that many students choose not to frequent, feels deeply wrong. The money students pay for their education should help foster a deep drive to enquire about subjects they do not yet understand and then be able to articulate and communicate that learning to others. Ideally, students will leave university with skills, that may not be quite as hands on as if they had learnt a craft, but hopefully practical in terms of helping their future employers succeed.

Now, while there are near infinite topics and examples that could be considered, from AI to robotization to new marketing philosophies to new approaches to managing supply chains, introducing bitcoin may provide a useful foundation on which to begin development of curriculum. The main concern is the views of those within the business school, while I only have a few data points and would like to be proved wrong, I worry that the British Broadcasting Corporation has successfully tainted their views on bitcoin. Did you know that each bitcoin payment‘uses a swimming pool of water’? I hope you didn’t because that was a blatantly false statement from the BBC that not been retracted since first being published in November 2023. If the views of those within the business school are misinformed, but also, if this topic they are aware of has not led to them exploring this topic further leads to further concerns, are they not inquisitive? I imagine points in the future when colleagues tell me how luck I was, to have bought bitcoin in 2020 and they aren’t so fortunate, I bite my tongue, then say; I’m not lucky, I just made the effort to learn about bitcoin (which is the most socially acceptable response I can find). But this isn’t just about buying an asset that may go up in value, but using bitcoin to add new relevance to so much of what is taught in a business school, to prepare graduates or entrepreneurs for a future that will likely benefit from having bitcoin integrated into it.

This is not a place to begin listing each module and describe in detail how bitcoin must be integrated into it. This is not sustainability, and I would not want module leaders to feel they are required to do something, even when the outcome is students feeling they are repeatedly covering topics that are not relevant to them or the topic they are studying. However, if those designing modules can appreciate what bitcoin is, they may be able to appreciate particular modules within their suite that may have elements that are aligned with aspects of bitcoin. While in no way exhaustive, modules could ask or include such topics as:

1)         Marketing: How a trillion-dollar asset succeeded without a marketing budget?

2)         Sustainability: How bitcoin mining is transforming renewable energy generation

3)         Finance: Financial engineering of bitcoin treasury companies

4)         Entrepreneurship: Venture capital for bitcoin native firms

5)         Human resources: New models of staff engagement and remuneration

6)         Tourism: Developing bitcoin holiday destinations

7)         Economics: Exploring economies using fixed supply assets in practice

8)         Accounting: Exploring alternative units of account in business

9)         Business Start-up: Exploring bitcoin enabled business start-ups

10)   Operations: Reimagining operational improvement initiatives

Through a process of clearly introducing what bitcoin is, as well as questioning established views and misunderstanding of bitcoin, modules would be able to provide students with opportunities to both learn about bitcoin and then apply it within their subject area. In comparison to the above example of the impact of simply buying bitcoin instead of going to university, the suggested modules would allow students to apply what they had learnt about bitcoin to practical contexts. By taking a step back from the potential to get more dollars or pounds, learning about bitcoin may also allow students to build appreciations of behaviours that are often associated with money that doesn’t need to be spent immediately, low time preference. While there would be no obligation, this may also enable students to begin saving in bitcoin during their time at university (rather than spending everything they earn on take out), preparing themselves for some time in the future, with assets they have previously accumulated that have appreciated in value.

However, these benefits are not limited to the students, if members of staff have been sufficiently inquisitive to explore how bitcoin could be integrated into their module or indeed their own research, they may also choose to begin saving in bitcoin. While academic careers are accepted as having potentially lower wages that some private sector jobs, but having this balanced again flexible working and good pensions, in recently years, drops in student numbers and limits on international students have put many institutions under considerable pressure. As a result, lecturers are coming under more pressure to publish more with less time dedicated to research, while also being required to spend more time in classrooms with the associate preparatory and marking burden. Without saving in bitcoin, a major concern for me is that academics are being continually stretched to do more with less, doing their own research in evenings and weekends, forced to remain in academia to collect their “good pension”, which may ultimately get cut. While able to maintain the existing system of students receiving face to face support in the short term, without spare resources to develop new knowledge and refreshing teaching material, the students will ultimately suffer, with staff being stretched ever thinner. Learning about, and then saving in bitcoin may provide staff with a buffer, knowing that they have been able to accumulate sufficient assets so they are not required to continue working 5 days a week into their 50s or 60s. The released time could then be directed towards their own learning, allowing them to make use of newly released slack resources for research and then research informed teaching.

So, to return to the opening question, why do students go to a business school? While it may be to understand elements of a business to help them decide what area of a business they may want to work in, it also needs to be able to provide students with the skills to succeed in which ever part of a business they choose to work in. For this, students need to know why they have gone to university in the first place and then had sufficient time to study and learn. Without this, university may simply be viewed as a very expensive, few gap years, they then spend the next couple of decades paying for. What learning about bitcoin may do during their university journey may do is help them answer more fundamental questions, such as what is money, which if they can’t answer, the aims of a business school and the purpose of getting a better paid graduate job must be difficult to articulate. Why spend 3 years accumulating debt, only to spend the following decades paying that debt off, particularly if the money you are earning is losing its value because of inflation? Another topic that integrating bitcoin into a business school would help articulate more clearly, particularly if existing economics modules are based on the work of John Maynard Keynes; no, no, no, inflation is not good, can you give me an example of when theft produced a positive outcome?

For those few (as a portion of population) individuals and businesses that have begun to save in bitcoin, with prices per coin approaching new all time highs, this has likely been a good decision. Bitcoin is good for saving and for businesses looking to be around in the long term, at the very least being able to save in bitcoin, is likely to have a positive impact on the business. To extend this argument to a university, but specifically a Business School, integrating bitcoin could provide students with an introduction to help them save for the future and learn about bitcoin’s relevance to business, while also potentially helping staff spend more time doing what they value. While I would never say that Business Schools should adopt/integrate bitcoin, I would definitely not want to be seen as an educational institution that wasn’t sufficiently inquisitive to be actively investigating this emerging strategic reserve asset.