## 5 Evaluation and Discussion
### The Real Impact of UniChain in Managing EARs  
Generally, an EAR is a record in a database that stores academic information about students in a digital format. There are two ways to issue an academic record: it could be created digitally or be digitized from existing paper records. Record digitalization refers to the process of transforming different materials of the records into digital format while preserving the record characteristics of reliability, usability, authenticity and integrity [25]. An EARs management system is a digital tool with a web and/or mobile interface that enables access to the record content while maintaining its important characteristics. Relational databases are used to implement the existing EARs management systems. Figure 12: Throughput vs. Academic Records. Currently, a student may visit more than one institution during his/her study, for instance, exchange-students or credit-mobile students. Credit-mobile students refer to \"study-abroad\" or registering in one university while taking courses at another, such as those in the EU's Erasmus program. The number of credit-mobile students are increasing and their destinations diversifying [26]. These students remain enrolled in their home countries while receiving a small number of credits from foreign institutions. There were at least 1.6 million students from abroad who were undertaking tertiary level studies across the EU in 2016 [27]. In fact, the EAR will be stored in the database of the university that issued the record, which will be the only eligible university for editing it. In other words, the EARs of a student are placed in different institutions databases, thus providers cannot have a comprehensive overview of all the records of a single student. Academic provider databases are partly open to students and other academic providers with different specified permissions. Students with access rights could query their EARs from different universities. Universities with access rights could query EARs of a common student from other university when there is a need. These situations cause a lack of coordinated data management and exchange. Hence, academic records are isolated and fragmented, rather than cohesive. Moreover, as academic providers are solely maintaining the records in which they had issued, there is a difficulty to confirm data integrity when a malicious entity modifies that single copy of the record or even when a record is removed from a provider database. The need for multiple access to the EARs had raised the interoperability challenges between students and academic providers which pose additional barriers to effective data sharing. Additionally, as technology is constantly evolving, several advanced techniques are developed to violate digital privacy and security. Unfortunately, academic records are considered as major targets for information theft since they include private and sensitive information, e.g., the students' names, identity numbers, contacts info and addresses. In 2018, the hacking of Australian National University resulted in the theft of 19 years' worth of data. Electronic records protection is a complex and massive undertaking [28]. According to the identity intelligence company 4 iQ [29], the number of data breaches increased more than 400% in 2018, exposing almost 15 billion records, and the average cost of a security breach is $17 million. The following points summarize the problems addressed by current EARs management systems:  
* the lack of coordinated data management and exchange, as EARs are fragmented and isolated, rather than cohesive;
* the need for multiple access to the EARs raises the interoperability challenges between students and universities;
* the inability to transfer or access EARs and testimonials across multiple institutions, making it difficult to achieve effective data sharing; and
* the lack of protection and control of private information by data owners.