ABSTRACT
Drawing primarily on examples from the United States and Australia, this chapter explores the nature of the credit offered, and the necessary linkage between this credit and issues of validation, assessment and authentication. It argues that massive open online courses (MOOCs) embody a rationalisation of education that mobilises popular ideologies of contemporary universities as out of touch and irrelevant to present-day economies and employment imperatives. MOOCs for credit go further to entrepreneurialise higher education, by monetising the MOOC model. The chapter also argues that a more considered and reflexive understanding of the relationship between information, knowledge, capitalism, education, students and teachers is needed within the MOOCs for credit debate. It concludes that the 'traditional' MOOC model that celebrates students as the key determinants of their own education cannot service MOOCs for credit that are situated within a much wider context of and for academic knowledge, expertise, accreditation, academic standards and scholarship.
