The First ITS Bachelor’s Degree graduates and a certificate with a link to the blockchain certificate

The Institute of Tourism Studies held its graduation ceremony, where it saw over 200 students graduate in various courses ranging from Foundation to Bachelor’s Degree level. This year, the ceremony is paramount, due to the fact that it saw the first ITS Bachelor’s Degree student cohort graduate, and for the first year ever, ITS students’ certificates have a QR code linked to their blockchain certificate.

Back in 2017, ITS launched its first ever MQF level 6 programmes. This year, it sees the first cohort of students graduating from two of these programmes, namely in Bachelor in Culinary Arts (Hons) which is offered in collaboration with the Institut Paul Bocuse in France and in Bachelor in International Hospitality Management (Hons) offered in collaboration with the Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences in Finland.

In the 2017 graduation ceremony, the ITS was also the first Hospitality and Tourism Institution globally and the first national institution to provide all of its graduates with a blockchain certificate, thanks to a project brought by the Ministry for Education and Employment in collaboration with the company Learning Machine Technologies.

Learning Machine is a software company headquartered in Malta and the US which provides a secure platform to issue certificates in a format that is tamper proof, recipient owned and independently verifiable.

Fast forward to 2019, ITS is now also the first institution globally to provide its graduates with a link to their individual and secure digital certificate anchored on the blockchain, via a QR code printed on their physical certificate. The blockcert is of benefit to both the student and future employer, since the certification is available and sharable easily and everywhere on one’s mobile devise.

ITS CEO Pierre Fenech congratulated all graduates and also thanked the Degree graduates who raised ITS’s profile by being termed by the international partners as the top performers among international students when studying at their institution. Fenech said that this means a lot about the level the ITS students are reaching and gives the ITS management determination to continue to offer great opportunities to their future students.

While congratulating all students who successfully completed their courses at the Institute of Tourism Studies, ITS chairman Carlo Micallef thanked them for choosing the Institute to further their studies and the career path they chose that shall lead them to be protagonists in Malta’s tourism industry in the years to come.

Micallef added that it is with great satisfaction to see today, that with the good work and contribution of management, lecturers, staff, the Board of Governors and the students themselves, ITS has come a long way in recent years and they have together managed to reach high levels of excellence in vocational learning, a prestigious standing for ITS that is being recognised by other international institutions.