Someone Else, Not Me

Inside Higher Ed today carries a story about various institutions that are offering MOOCs (massive open online courses).  Some of these courses have been approved for college credit by the American Council on Education.  But the institutions offering the courses say they are for other universities; they won't give credit for the courses to their own students.  Among these institutions is UC-Irvine. All the courses are in technical fields such as math. 

...No students at Irvine... will be able to take any of these courses for credit, though. Gary Matkin, UC-Irvine's dean of continuing education, distance learning and summer session...said UC-Irvine does not consider its Coursera courses, as currently constructed, to be worthy of its credit because "we do not control learning environment of these students.... There are 250,000 signups in our six courses, with open enrollment so anybody can sign up, and those anybodies can influence negatively the learning environment of students who are serious about taking it." ...

Full article at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/07/ace-deems-5-massive-open-courses-worthy-credit

It's not clear how the "anybodies" can negatively influence the learning environment of others if each anybody is sitting alone at a computer in a separate location.  But in any case, the message seems to be that when it comes to giving credit, the host institution is saying to the course takers, let credit be given by someone else, not me: