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—Preface —

I think I know why noses grow larger as people age. It has to do with needing a secure foundation for reading glasses to rest on, with the ability to slide them down a little ways as necessary to adjust the focus. The smaller the print, the farther down the nose the glasses need to rest in order to get the right focus. A petite little nose just doesn’t cut it if a person is over 40 and likes to read. People who get a nose job have it all wrong; they should be asking the plastic surgeon for a bigger nose, not a smaller one. It’s no wonder so many in Hollywood are clueless—they’re not readers; they don’t have the nose for it.

That’s one thing I am, a reader. I’ve been reading ever since I can remember. They will have to pry a book out of my hands when I die, because until then, I’ll be reading.

For all the reading, studying, and discussing things of higher learning for all of my adult life, there is one thing I am not—and that is a college graduate. I have the equivalent of a college education, if not better; I just got it in a different way. I am what would be called an autodidact—a self-taught person. However, that doesn’t mean I was holed up in a room by myself for years, my education still involved a lot of interaction, as well as some classes here and there.

As far as college goes, I actually tried it, but I couldn’t stand it, so I ended up dropping out. I didn’t like the socialist, godless mentality. I didn’t like what I felt were unhealthy attitudes about sex and family life. I didn’t like how the “high” in higher education seemed to be about drugs and alcohol, instead of knowledge. The other reasons why I couldn’t stand college are due to the problems with a regular college education that I outline and provide evidence of as Book One unfolds. Basically there just wasn’t enough value in what could be learned for all the effort and expense that it required. You’ll get the full details later.

There were better colleges I could have gone to, but I either didn’t know about them, or I couldn’t get into one of them. I was clueless at the time as to how to prepare myself for college. It’s the old “Wish I knew then what I know now.”

So, I have spent the last 25+ years or so learning through experience, independent study, discussion, debate, and reading tons of the best books ever written about science, religion, humanity, history, politics, business, war, economics, finances, accounting and so forth. I wrote dissertations about some of my studies, all the while reading and observing how contemporary life in the world played against what I studied. Much of this was done in my spare time, of course, while I worked for a living. However, I also learned a lot through my career.

I also spent some time in South America, working with indigenous people of the Andes as well as some of the European upper class there. Talk about an education. What an incredible experience. I learned to speak, read, and write Spanish fluently, and a little bit of the Aymara dialect. I experienced another culture and government—boy, did I love America even more after that.

Despite loving America even more now, I learned a lot about humility, and how some people living in poverty can be as happy as, or happier than, people with so much material wealth. I learned that prosperity is difficult to handle, and it can blind people and cause ignorance to reign as much as poverty can. When a person thinks he has it all, he is often close-minded. The truth of the matter could be that he is still lacking in areas that are more important. I also learned that people radically different than me could be very kind and loving to me.

In college terms, I would say that I majored in finance and minored in political science and language. My wife has been studying for years as well, and has extensively researched the topic of brain compatible learning and education. She graciously shared many of her studies with me, providing valuable insights for Book One.

Those are the reasons why I am qualified to talk about college. When you think about it, the subject is really higher education. College is just the vehicle that most people these days use to get there. College is supposed to be about education, and I have an education.

I think the best evidence of that will manifest itself in this book. Nevertheless, while praise is better left for others to give, I feel it is necessary for my argument to here and now provide a few examples of the fruits of my education.

Without brushing up first I took an IQ test in recent history and I scored a 137, as opposed to when I was in high school. At that time, I scored somewhere around the 106 to 116 range. To be fair, college type math is not my strong suit, and I may have got lucky on the math, and I must say that it was an unsupervised test and I’m not sure that I did it in the standard allotted time.

But there is more. Without brushing up first, I also recently took a civics test from the www.americancivicliteracy.org website, which I know I did quickly and within any allotted time. This same test was given to college seniors at many of America’s “leading” colleges, including the Ivy Leagues. According to the results, the mean average at most colleges was an F. They flunked! I scored 83.33%, which means I got a B.

There is a website called freerice.com where a person can practice vocabulary words, and for every word a person gets right, 20 grains of rice are donated to the world’s hungry. The site automatically adjusts to right above a person’s level, so he is always challenged. The highest score possible is 60, but they say that it is rare to get above a 50. I typically score a 52, and I have scored as high as 53.

In high school, I had a C+ average. I took one year of official college and then dropped out. So according to most experts, I shouldn’t be able to do so well on IQ, civics, and vocabulary tests. So what changed? I believe what changed is that I got out of a lousy educational system and fell in love with learning again, and I learned the right way to learn.

True, in some areas I lack, but in many areas my education goes well beyond the average college graduate’s, to the point that I have learned what a superior method of education is. That may seem pretentious and cocky on my part, but when a person can compare two things so drastically different, it is sometimes easy to make a judgment on which is best. I believe many readers will agree with me, once they read Book One and compare for themselves. The point here is not to elevate me, but rather to elevate the method of learning and the subject matter, that is the superior part. I’m not very bright, you can ask my family, and I’m sure they’ll tell you that I’m not.

Yes, despite my bragging, there are plenty of people who are a lot smarter than I am, even among those without a Heavenly Education; yet, if a Heavenly Education can do what it has done for me, imagine what it can do for a really smart person using the right college. What I am saying is that if in some key academic areas I can outscore the average college graduate, there must be something to my method of learning that is superior, because I am surely not superior in brainpower to all those people.

The good news is that there are colleges where you can learn as I learned. There is a lot of ground to cover, so bear with me and we’ll get to that later on in the book.

On with my story.

For most of my career, I have worked in insurance and financial planning. About five years ago, I discovered a niche in the financial industry that I decided to pursue. It is college financial aid planning. After a while of doing that, I started thinking that it didn’t do my clients enough good to potentially be awarded more aid if the student didn’t get admitted to the college, so I started learning about what it takes to gain admittance to college. Besides reading many books on the subject, I learned a great deal from homeschooling parents all over the nation who were getting their kids into highly selective colleges. They would email their successes and failures about the processes they followed to help their child gain admission, or about what their child did to gain admission. I also learned from practical experience in working with clients. Lastly, I learned a lot from researching many colleges’ admissions policies.

Then another thing happened. The more I learned about colleges, the more I thought about how torn I felt that I was helping families get their student to college and even paying less, but not really getting what I felt was value for their money. That is one of the big reasons I dropped out of college.

Later, after studying for many years on my own, I had conversations with college graduates about things I had learned and I was surprised at their lack of knowledge. I really started thinking that in many cases a college degree is just a possible job ticket and that’s about it. The more I found out about the average college education, the more appalled I became.

Then in more recent history, to my joy and amazement, I started finding out that there were colleges that taught from the same books I had been studying all these years. These books are great books, classic books, and they give the whole story, not just a textbook containing some professor’s biases with precious parts missing. Many of the good colleges also use experiential methods, also known as hands-on learning.

I further learned that some of these colleges were using brain compatible methods of teaching and learning that my wife had studied about. And these colleges believe in Judeo-Christian values and freedom, private philanthropy, sensible principles of economics, and the principles this great country was founded upon. There is even more to it than that, but the details are in Book One.

I had done enough studying to know what was wrong with education, but more importantly, I had studied enough to find out how it can be done right. It really got my solar panel flaring up to see that college could be more than necessary busy work towards a possible job ticket, but really be something that teaches people to think and get the whole picture, which prepares them for more than just a job.

That’s when I knew that my new mission was not just to help people get a cheaper education, but to get value for their education. That’s the starting place—looking for colleges where a Heavenly Education is possible—and then with that as the aim, also teach how to be prepared for college, work on gaining admission, and pay as little as possible. I do wish I knew in high school what I know now. Maybe I would have finished a college degree and possibly got much of what I’ve learned in a shorter period, and been even further ahead by now. That is what I hope for today’s students.

I originally started writing this book for clients that I work with, but then I realized that the message was so important and had a broad enough appeal that it needed to get out beyond my normal circle of influence.

Much of Book One is laid out based on an architectural structure. In a break from normal methods, I started with the roof first. I had thought my architectural idea to be unique, but once again I have been shown that, as it says in Ecclesiastes, “[T]here is no new thing under the sun.”

After coming up with my idea, I discovered (quite by accident) that on one of his travels, Mr. Gulliver met an architect who was designing houses to be built by starting first with the roof. It appears that I am preceded by about 300 years.

I do suspect though, that Gulliver’s acquaintance had a great deal of difficulty in getting builders to follow his designs, and so it never caught on elsewhere. Conversely, I believe it works well for an education, because it builds with the ultimate goal in mind first, and since it is intellectual and not physical, it is not subject to gravitational challenges like building a home is.

I have alluded to Book One several times. There is a reason for it. This book, “A Heavenly College Education on an Earthly Budget,” is really two books in one, which I cleverly named Book One and Book Two, in that order.

The primary purpose of the two books together is to show you three things:

• How to prepare for and get an education of high value
• At a lower cost
• And without getting heavily in debt

Book One is also partly an appeal to educators to improve their product, and for legislators to butt out and allow for intellectual freedom; although this isn’t its primary purpose.

The subtitle of Book One is, “Double Your Financial Aid—Double Your Degree’s Value.” The primary audience for Book One is students and their parents. They will find out what a Heavenly Education is, with all of its ideal components. I will contrast the ideal Heavenly Education with a regular education. Future students will also find out how to prepare for a Heavenly College Education, and how to get it at a lower cost.

Even though Book One is written with more of an adult tone, it is actually most of the time directed to the student. I want parents and students to know that there is more to education than training for a career, and that there should be a higher purpose to their education.

Book One is not only for the most faithful year-round churchgoer who is interested in a college education, but it is also an appeal to all people interested in college who believe in God, whatever their current commitment or method of worship.

I aim to convince readers that the learning of liberty is not only for the statesman, that the learning of virtue is not only for the clergy, and that the practice of philanthropy is not only for the wealthy; but that liberty, virtue, and philanthropy go hand in hand with intelligence and are for everyone.

I also aim to give parents the knowledge and impetus to take charge of their family’s education and get it on their terms. Most people narrowly shop for a major, but they should be shopping for an education to go with it.

Life isn’t perfect and you may not find the college that has everything I discuss in the book, plus everything you want in a major. Nevertheless, the college you ultimately choose ought to score at least high on the most important of the principles in Book One.

If you’ll trust me when I say this book is worth reading, I’ll trust you to read and decide for yourself which of the principles are the most important to you. How’s that for a deal?

Parents, it’s important for you to read at least Book One, and it is important to discuss it with your child and get him on board. He should read it, too. Some of Book One may be above his level of interest if he is still in middle school, so you may have to provide some guidance there.
Many families wait until the student is a junior or a senior in high school, and then start frantically looking at what they are going to do about college. They shouldn’t wait.

If you can, you’ll want to read this book and start deciding on what you will do and what strategies you will work on while your child is still in middle school. If you wait until your child is a junior or senior in high school, it may be hard to get him to change his mind, which he will have already made up in a certain way about what he wants for college. As you will read in this book, a young person’s decision is often not conducive to the best education at the best price. After all, as bright as he is, he still has a lot to learn—well, don’t we all?

It’s a good idea to have a notebook, pencil and paper ready as you read the book so you can write down ideas and inspiration that comes to you, and so you can make plans, that goes for both the parents and the student.

I wrote Book Two with more of a youthful tone, and it is primarily for the student, but the parents would do well to know the content also. The subtitle of Book Two is “Strategies for College Admission and Winning Scholarships.” The book contains a lot of great advice about that very subject. There is also some of that element in Book One in the chapters called “Having a Vision—Becoming Your Vision Now,” “Making the Crown Jewels,” and the whole of “Section 4 – The Earthly Budget.”

All quotes from the Bible are from the “King James Version,” published by Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville, TN.