Bethany College Offering Absurd Degree in MLM

[Doc Bunkum]

I suppose it had to happen eventually...

College Offers Degree in Multi-level Marketing (a.k.a. Pyramid Selling!)

Bethany College, where 84% of students graduate with an average of $22,699 in student loans, is now offering students a chance to spend four years learning how to succeed as an Amway distributor.

The college will offer a marketing major with a concentration in network marketing, along with a certificate in network marketing. The major involves a mind-numbing 56-57 credits of multi-level marketing studies. Ironically though, one of the major talking points used by network marketing recruiters is that it’s a business anyone can get involved in with no prior knowledge. On its website, Amway argues that “With Amway, you are never in business alone. In addition to the support you will receive from your sponsor, Amway provides you with world-class training, marketing, products, and customer support.”

The author of the article concludes his piece by noting...

The college currently enrolls just 592 students. But if 10 percent of those students enroll in the network marketing major — and they recruit 10 of their friends, and each of those friends recruits 10 of their friends … move over Harvard?

Hmmm....

[wserra]

You only need to read a couple of sentences from their MLM page to know where their interest lies:

The high failure rate in the network marketing industry mostly results from inadequate training and experience and unethical business practices.

Well, no. The extremely high failure rate results not from dumb or uneducated participants, but from a business model that sucks. One would think that a business school would realize this. Unless, of course, it was trying to find itself a niche to increase tuition revenues.

[littleroundman]

by LenClements » Tue Jun 07, 2011 4:06 pm
Bethany College is offering a degree in Marketing, with an emphasis on multilevel marketing. Also, they are developing a formal online certificate course that will focus on MLM.

I am working with Bethany College as their consultant on this project. I will be interviewing David Frost, the Assistant Director of their Business Department, on my "Inside Network Marketing" podcast in a few days. The primary purpose of this interview is to offer more clarity to what Bethany is developing and to address any questions or concerns, such as those that have been posed within this thread. If you should have any others, please forward them to me at MarketWave@cox.net and I will attempt to have them addressed during the interview.

Thanks.

Len Clements
MarketWave, Inc.

[Brandybuck]

In a regular business, you get your shop up and running and profitable. Then you franchise out one location. And then one more. And so on. At each step you must remain profitable. You build upon your prior successes.

MLM is the opposite. Your first stop is to franchise out to ten of your "friends", and then spend your time getting your franchises to start their own franchises. A lack of cash flow merely means you need to redouble your franchising efforts.

[soapboxmom]

The most absurd part of this is our resident clown Lenny Clements is involved. He is a delinquent Mensa member with an associates degree from Heald College. http://info.heald.edu/?dmredirect=ISHGB ... 2godYzXmMA
Isn't that just a two year certificate? How in the world does that qualify him to be involved in any four year degree college program? Absurd to be sure?

Soapboxmom

[Doc Bunkum]

Something still doesn't jive here. The appeal of network marketing has always been something along these lines...

With network marketing, there are no big capital requirements, no geographical limitations, no minimum quotas required and no special education or skills needed.

Now they're promoting a 4 year program to work a business model that requires no special education or skills?

Unless I'm missing something, I always thought the idea of going to college was to learn a skill or trade that would allow you to enter the workforce when you graduate and get a decent paying job and become a productive member of society.

Guess I was wrong about that one.

So let's see, you graduate from Bethany College four years later owing an average of $22,699 in debt that has to be paid off. Not to mention the lost opportunity of four years of wages if you hadn't of gone off to college. Say around $40K a year? That's another $150K or so you could have earned and missed out on and are now behind on.

So you graduate. Now you have to buy a distributor kit, inventory, a telephone, a supply of "Ask Me How To Get Rich" buttons and what not. Then you have to start building your business more or less from scratch, unless starting a downline in college was part of the curriculum and part of the requirements to graduate.

Anybody want to break out the abacus and tell me how long you figure it would take someone to even break even on this kind of deal?

[webhick]

Something still doesn't jive here. The appeal of network marketing has always been something along these lines...

With network marketing, there are no big capital requirements, no geographical limitations, no minimum quotas required and no special education or skills needed.

Now they're promoting a 4 year program to work a business model that requires no special education or skills?

Unless I'm missing something, I always thought the idea of going to college was to learn a skill or trade that would allow you to enter the workforce when you graduate and get a decent paying job and become a productive member of society.

He said "no special education...needed," which I guess means that they're targeting those with learning disabilities which required them to be educated separately from the other kids in their age group for at least one class, but you don't have to be one of those folks to get in.

[Doc Bunkum]

by LenClements » Tue Jun 07, 2011 4:06 pm

I am working with Bethany College as their consultant on this project. I will be interviewing David Frost, the Assistant Director of their Business Department, on my "Inside Network Marketing" podcast in a few days. The primary purpose of this interview is to offer more clarity to what Bethany is developing and to address any questions or concerns, such as those that have been posed within this thread.

Thanks.

Len Clements
MarketWave, Inc.

Terrific!

Just what Bethany College needs - Lenny Clements on board to add a well needed dose of credibility for the program.

Anybody know if Lenny is charging them his standard $225.00 per hour (prorated, no minimum), $1,500.00 per day, 8 hour maximum (50% for travel days) fee?

[wserra]

Now they're promoting a 4 year program to work a business model that requires no special education or skills?

No, no, no, Doc. They're not interested in educating the distributors of tomorrow. As we all know, 99% of MLM distributors don't have a pot to piss in. No alumni contributions from that source. They want to educate the promotors of tomorrow. Why, I hear they're already endowing various chairs. Y'know, the Len Clements Chair of Over-the-Top Non-Stop Self-Promotion. The Broker Jones Chair of Voodoo Forex. The Thomas 'Andy' Bowdoin Chair of Money Laundering. The Harvey Dockstader Chair of Pyramid Construction.

I'm sure you can think of others.

[Doc Bunkum]

Tracy Coenen offers her take over on the Fraud Files - Bethany College teaching students how to scam others.

I thought it was a hoax. Surely this couldn’t be true? An actual college, offering a curriculum in “network marketing”????

You know – - network marketing – - as in multi-level marketing, as in legalized pyramid schemes. Yes, folks, it’s true. Bethany College in Kansas is going to be offering a curriculum in professional scamming!

But if a college is going to be teaching this network marketing, multi-level marketing stuff to students, then it has to be legit, right? Wrong....

Lenny Clements is miffed. Over on Moneyland he's sulking because Tracy won't let him post a 10 page rebuttal on her blog. Somehow, he feels his first amendment rights to free speech have been violated.

BTW, I would have posted a response to Tracy Coenen on her blog, but this adamant defender of free speech and blogger's first amendment rights censored my last round of responses to her commentary and has blocked my ability to post any new responses.

Tracy doesn't see it quite the same way as Lenny does though. As she puts it...

Too bad Lenny, who lies about being a member of Mensa, has spent years showing the world how dumb he is –> talking about the First Amendment and free speech as it relates to my blog. You’d think by now that someone would tell him that freedom of speech doesn’t mean I have to allow his filth to dirty up my blog.

If I didn't know better, I'd say these two don't get along too well.

[littleroundman]

As is usual, the story of the MLM degree has received a Len Clements School of Spin makeover and the facts bear little or no relation to the truth.

Here's the headline, direct from Lennys' page HERE

College to Offer Course in MLM
Accredited Marketing Degree to Emphasize Network Marketing

HOWEVER,

a quick check of Lennys' own podcast interview with David Smith, Associate Professor of Business at Bethany College, reveals that, in fact, what Bethany College intends to do is include a THREE HOUR credit option on network marketing in its' FOUR YEAR marketing course.

Bethany also intends to offer students 'Practicum" or "mentoring" with approved network marketers, should they so desire it.

IOW,

as is usual with most of the shock and awe announcements which issue forth from the keyboards of so many MLM "gurus": the hype far exceeds the reality.

[Doc Bunkum]

As is usual, the story of the MLM degree has received a Len Clements School of Spin makeover and the facts bear little or no relation to the truth.

... David Smith, Associate Professor of Business at Bethany College, reveals that, in fact, what Bethany College intends to do is include a THREE HOUR credit option on network marketing in its' FOUR YEAR marketing course.

Nice catch, LRM.

From the Bethany College website...

Bethany is the first institution to offer network marketing as a major. The program’s mission is to promote integrity, trust, and transparency in network marketing, a business model that is underrepresented in education.

Network marketing major?

A little further down the page on that Bethany link we learn...

Network Marketing Courses May Include:

BU270 Network Marketing........................................................................ 3 hrs
BU387 Network Marketing Practicum........................................................ 12 hrs

So you spend 3 hrs in class learning about MLM, then they assign you to a mentor and you go out and stand on a street corner for 12 hrs. handing out flyers to strangers, inviting them to a hotel meeting, and you can graduate from the marketing program with a major in network marketing?

Sweet!

[littleroundman]

So you spend 3 hrs in class learning about MLM, then they assign you to a mentor and you go out and stand on a street corner for 12 hrs. handing out flyers to strangers, inviting them to a hotel meeting, and you can graduate from the marketing program with a major in network marketing?

Sweet!

And with a lanyard and a badge saying: "I'm a self employed squillionaire - ask me how"

[Lambkin]

So you spend 3 hrs in class learning about MLM, then they assign you to a mentor and you go out and stand on a street corner for 12 hrs. handing out flyers to strangers, inviting them to a hotel meeting, and you can graduate from the marketing program with a major in network marketing?

Then you get to start your own university to teach other people how to do MLM marketing.