Blockchain technology is frequently described only as the infrastructure behind cryptocurrencies, yet over the past decade its distinguishing properties — decentralization, immutability, and cryptographic verifiability — have drawn sustained attention from researchers working in digital learning, educational technology, and higher-education policy. This paper synthesizes recent (2019–2025) systematic reviews, bibliometric analyses, and qualitative studies to examine how blockchain is being applied beyond financial transactions, with a particular focus on higher education credentialing, academic-record management, and institutional governance, situated alongside comparable developments in healthcare and supply-chain management to illustrate the technology's broader trajectory. The review approach draws on systematic literature reviews and bibliometric mapping studies published in established databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, and IEEE Xplore. Findings indicate that blockchain applications cluster around four functional areas: micro-credentialing and certificate verification, academic-record and transcript management, learning-analytics and intellectual-property protection, and cross-institutional governance frameworks. Evidence on effectiveness is encouraging at the level of technical performance — verification processes have been shown to complete in under a second in pilot systems — but empirical evidence of institution-wide adoption, cost-effectiveness, and learning-outcome impact remains sparse. Adoption is consistently constrained by technological barriers (scalability, interoperability, standardization), organizational barriers (managerial commitment, budget, absence of skilled staff), and environmental barriers (regulation, data-protection law, and sector-wide governance norms). The paper concludes that blockchain's educational value currently lies less in transforming pedagogy and more in re-engineering the trust infrastructure that underpins credentials and records, and that its long-term success depends on interoperability standards and cross-sector collaboration rather than on the technology alone.