&gt; I think it&#x27;s pretty funny that MOOC&#x27;s bought into the premise that the purpose of higher education was education.<p>Er, they don&#x27;t. MOOCs recognize that people come to higher education for several different purposes, including  education, credentialing for employment, and networking (possibly others, but those are the big three.)<p>Most MOOCs build on this understanding with a business model that gives away much (though, often, not all) of the &quot;education&quot; part away free-of-charge and selling credentialing as a premium service.<p>&gt; I think the universities understand a lot better than the MOOCs that the point was never that Stanford had education you can&#x27;t get elsewhere, but that it lets you tell people you went to Stanford and other people didn&#x27;t.<p>I think MOOCs understand that. OTOH, the value proposition of MOOCs to users is that they unbundled some of the things bundled together in universities, so that people who <i>don&#x27;t</i> need the things which .