Article from MIT Media Lab announcing the launch of BlockCerts.
Blockcerts provides a decentralized credentialing system. The Bitcoin blockchain acts as the provider of trust, and credentials are tamper-resistant and verifiable. Blockcerts can be used in the context of academic, professional, and workforce credentialing.
This is probably the first of many blockchain academic credentialing systems, but it's released under on an open source license, so will have some advantages for users.
Further reading:
What we learned from designing an academic certificates system on the blockchain
Certificates, Reputation, and the Blockchain
