Issuing a digital degree certificate

Overview

Universities issue a digital degree credential that graduates can present anywhere, without delays or manual verification.

The graduate keeps a portable proof of the award, while the university remains the authoritative issuer and verifiers can check authenticity and status without a bespoke integration.

Why it matters

Degree fraud is costly and hard to detect. Manual verification can also slow recruitment, professional registration, migration, and further study processes.

Verifiable Credentials create a cleaner model:

• the university issues a tamper-evident degree credential when the award is conferred
• the graduate stores the credential in a wallet
• employers, professional bodies, and platforms verify the award directly from the presented proof
• status checks support correction, revocation, or replacement if the credential changes

Ecosystem roles

• Issuer: The education institution issuing the degree credential.
• Holder: The graduate storing the credential in a wallet.
• Verifier: Employers, regulators, or platforms validating the credential.
• Trust governance: The rules that define accepted institutions, credential schemas, status checks, and replacement processes.

Trust decision

The verifier decision is narrow: does this person hold the claimed degree from a trusted institution?

That decision may depend on the issuing institution, award title, conferral date, credential status, and whether the credential is bound to the presenting graduate.

Privacy and assurance

The verifier should request only the claims needed for the application or registration decision. A job application may need degree title and conferral date, not unrelated student records.

Assurance depends on checking issuer trust, proof integrity, credential status, and whether the award details satisfy the verifier’s policy.

Implementation notes

• Define the authoritative event that triggers issuance, such as degree conferral or graduation approval.
• Support correction and replacement if award details are amended.
• Keep revocation and status endpoints available for long-lived credentials.
• Align credential data with existing academic record systems so the digital credential does not become a separate source of truth.

Objective

Issue a digital degree certificate to a graduate.

Description

A university issues a degree credential that the graduate can present to prove education credentials.

Actors

Graduate; education institution; employer, regulator, professional body, or platform verifier.

Dependencies

Graduate eligibility, award record, credential schema, issuer trust metadata, wallet support, and status endpoint.

Preconditions

The graduate has been confirmed as qualifying for the degree.

Postconditions

The graduate stores a digital degree certificate in their wallet and can present it to trusted verifiers.

flowchart LR
    UNI@{icon: "tabler:school", label: "University", pos: "b"} -->|Issues degree VC| WAL@{icon: "tabler:wallet", label: "Wallet", pos: "b"}
    WAL -->|Presents credential| VER@{icon: "tabler:id-badge", label: "Employer / verifier", pos: "b"}
    VER -->|Status check| REG@{icon: "tabler:book", label: "Credential registry", pos: "b"}

sequenceDiagram
    participant University
    participant Wallet
    participant Graduate
    participant Verifier as Employer / verifier
    participant Registry as Credential registry

    University-->>Wallet: Issue degree VC
    Graduate->>Wallet: Stores credential
    Graduate->>Verifier: Present degree VC
    Verifier->>Registry: Check status
    Registry-->>Verifier: Valid
    Verifier-->>Graduate: Verification complete