U.S. public university system policies were examined to learn how credit hours were determined for asynchronous online education. Findings indicated that (a) credit hour meaning and use are not consistent, (b) primary responsibility for credit hour decisions was at the local level, and (c) no policies exist to guide credit hour application for asynchronous online education. An unexpected finding indicated that an alternative was possible: a potential new method to track learning may be competency-based education.