The article considers the problem of rethinking the place and role of MOOCs in higher professional education development. Massive open online courses represent one of the open and distance education forms; an educational technology which became widespread in recent years of MOOCs revolution. Using MOOCs implies raising the level of education accessibility by means of interactive educational communities’ cooperation through public access via the Internet. Thus, the modern education configuration changes through the MOOCs active development. The article demonstrates the importance of MOOCs being a contemporary means of nonlinear education in the information era. The paper defines the term nonlinear education and analyzes its main characteristics, social functions, implementation mechanisms, drawbacks and restrictions. It also reveals the connection between nonlinear education and forming the socio-professional society structure. The author presents the analysis of western literature on the sociological studies of MOOCs. Compared to the other online education methods, MOOCs appear to be more effective for highly-motivated students, with clear academic and occupational needs. At the same time, this method mainly remains passive; appealing to few conversational technologies and thus it is considered to be frequently used in formal education. Based on empirical studies the article analyzes the level of Russian students’ readiness for studying in the form of MOOCs. It also stresses the need for further theoretical and empirical research in the field of MOOC, as well as the importance of finding new approaches to implementing MOOC in contemporary nonlinear education framework. Another important issue lies in defining the development paths to building an optimal combination with the formal education model.