AthenaStudies still selling exam training after misleading adverts

Tutoring company AthenaStudies is still offering training courses. This commercial exam trainer was found guilty of misleading advertising practices this month, the Advertising Code Committee ruled.

Among other things, AthenaStudies offers training courses for the selection of dental courses. Some groups are already full, AthenaStudies’ website says. But there are still places available: for around 180 euros, you can register for a one-day ‘decentralised selection’ course.

Switched to lottery system

The problem is: there is no more decentralised selection at all. All Dutch dental schools switched to lottery system this summer. The same applies to Groningen’s Medicine programme, for which Athena also offers selection courses.

Lottery system means that the allocated places are distributed completely randomly among applicants. The programmes no longer ask for marksheets, motivation letters or CVs, nor do candidates have to take tests.

Money back?

Lucas Reckman, spokesperson for AthenaStudies, says he knows that the selection method has changed, but he does not yet know the details. So he also cannot yet say whether Athena is cancelling the courses and whether participants will get their money back. According to the company’s terms and conditions, customers who cancel courses themselves do not get a refund. On the other hand, if the company lets a course be cancelled, they will get one.

Misleading advertising

Recently, the Advertising Code Committee took the company to task for the way Athena recruits students for exam training courses. The commission called it ‘deceptive’ and ‘misleading’. Reckman would not comment on that either.

Students working for Athena opened an app group under the name of a course and with the university’s logo, investigations by Groningen university magazine Ukrant showed. This was followed by a play with enthusiastic messages about Athena from various ‘students’. In Delft, university magazine Delta saw similar practices. Also at Erasmus University, students regularly received urgent-sounding emails from ‘their faculty’.

On the website, sixty training courses are still open for nine studies at Erasmus University.