It appears that Ja Rule is the type of man who wants to learn from his mistakes.
The 44-year-old rapper, whose real name is Jeffrey Atkins, shared a celebratory tweet to mark his completion of a Harvard Business School Online certificate course in ‘Entrepreneurship Essentials’ on Tuesday.
His foray into learning the ins and outs of being a proper, successful entrepreneur comes four years after he co-founded the disastrous Fyre Festival which landed his business partner, Billy McFarland, in the slammer.
The Graduate: Ja Rule shared a celebratory tweet to mark his completion of a Harvard Business School Online certificate course in ‘Entrepreneurship Essentials’ on Tuesday
‘I ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer buuuuut…,’ Ja Rule tweeted along with a photo of his certificate of completion from the Ivy League institution.
The certificate lists Jeffrey Atkins as having completed the Entrepreneurship Essentials program, which is a four-week long virtual education course.
Unlike the astronomically expensive Harvard Business School MBA program, which runs students $73,440 for the 2020-21 year, the online program is just $1,050.
There are also no prerequisites for the program, meaning anyone can do it if they pay the fees and complete the coursework, whereas the traditional MBA program has a less than 20% acceptance rate.
Student: The certificate lists Jeffrey Atkins as having completed the Entrepreneurship Essentials program, which is a four-week long virtual education course costing $1,050 with no prerequisites to sign up
‘Entrepreneurship Essentials consists of approximately 25 to 30 hours of material delivered over a four-week period. You can complete the coursework on your own time while meeting regular deadlines,’ according to the Harvard website.
Other celebrities have taken similar Harvard Business School programs in the past ranging from $10,000 three-day intensives to pricey multi-year certificate programs costing over $40,000.
These celebrities include Ciara, Chip and Joanna Gaines, Swizz Beatz, Maria Sharapova, Karlie Kloss, Katie Holmes, Channing Tatum and Tyra Banks.
Banks actually caught flack in 2012 when she was vague about her Harvard Business School qualifications and got called out for making it seem as though she completed the full MBA program.
However, despite the certificate course not being as stringent as the MBA program, the virtual classes are still taught by Harvard professors.
Alumni: Other celebrities have taken similar Harvard Business School programs in the past ranging from $10,000 three-day intensives to pricey multi-year certificate programs costing of over $40,000 – including Tyra Banks who caught flack in 2012 for seemingly trying to pass off her diploma as a real MBA
In particular, professor William Sahlman, who teaches the Entrepreneurship Essentials course, instructs eager students how to identify business opportunities, assess risks and rewards and provide guidance on financial issues that crop up for start-ups.
All of those skills would have been particularly helpful for Ja Rule when he co-founded what would become one of the most embarrassing events in modern history, the Fyre Festival.
The rapper helped develop the concept of the tropical music festival along with Billy McFarland who advertised Fyre as the millennial mecca – populated with gorgeous models, social media influencers like Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkkowski.
The execution of the luxury music festival was a cataclysmic failure.
Lesson learned: Entrepreneurship Essentials teaches how to identify business opportunities, assess risks and rewards and provide guidance on financial issues which are skills that would have been helpful for Ja Rule when he co-founded the disastrious Fyre Festival with Billy McFarland
Guests arrived on the Bahamian island that was hosting the event to find the site half-finished, their luggage missing, and the promised gourmet cuisine replaced by cheese sandwiches and soggy lettuce.
Musical acts dropped out and many guests found themselves stranded for days.
The calamity landed McFarland in jail on a six year sentence for defrauding investors of $28 million – which he was ordered to pay back.
Ja Rule ended up claiming that he too had been ‘hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hood winked, lead astray’ by McFarland.
He was not held criminally liable for the catastrophe and, in 2019, Ja Rule was dismissed as part of a Fyre Festival class action lawsuit.
Calamity: Ja Rule ended up claiming that he too had been ‘hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hood winked, lead astray’ by McFarland who is serving six years behind bars for defrauding investors of $28million