Gary North

Nov. 11, 2006

College is a high-risk crap-shoot. Over half of all students who enter college fail to graduate. Click here for evidence.

Not only do most high school students expect their parents to pay anywhere from $25,000 to $180,000 in after- tax money to send them to college, they expect their parents to bear the high risk of a drop-out situation: a pile of paid receipts and credit card bills with nothing to show for it.

If you are adult who wants to earn a degree, there is no sugar daddy for you.

Here is the dirty little secret of the academic degree-awarding industry known as higher education:

A college degree is way overpriced. Students (parents) pay way too much money. Students spend way too much time in class -- time that is far better spent in reading and writing. Then they pay room and board on top of it.

I know how the American academic system works. I was trained as a scholar. In 1972, I was awarded a doctoral degree by one of America's better universities. I have written 43 books. I have taught at the college level.

I'm outside the academic system, and I have been for most of my post-doctoral career. I know enough about how the system works not to be overly impressed with it. I also know how to beat the system.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE LOOPHOLES

Every system has loopholes. Loopholes are official exceptions that are mandatory for any system to be consistent with its official standards, but which would threaten its economic survival if more than a small minority of users took advantage of these loopholes. Higher education is no exception.

Here is my view: there is no good reason for people not to use them when they're available. They are made to be used. You might as well be the person who uses them.

Paying retail is not necessary. If a person knows where to look, he can earn a fully accredited bachelor's degree that is not overpriced: not in money charged, not in time invested (if he can meet certain life-experience requirements), and not in distance traveled. He can earn it at his desk for under $7,000. In under three years.

Because of the Web, a student never has to leave his desk to earn a B.A., except to take monitored exams at the local library.

The Web has changed just about everything. But it's only one option. There are others. There are many ways to skin the academic cat.

BEATING THE SYSTEM

Maybe you can do what Brad V. did. As a new high school graduate, he completed his bachelor's degree in six months for $5,000. This was not some phony diploma issued by an unaccredited diploma mill. It was a degree from a state university. He never left home to attend college.

Brad paid $5,000. He might have paid as little as $3,100. But then college would have taken him two years. As in most areas of life, there is a trade-off: you can pay less, but it will take longer to get a degree.

There are a few accredited colleges that grant people academic credit for their education-related work experience, and even life experience, meaning nonsalaried work. I call these "merit badge courses." If a student can show that he has the knowledge equivalent to a college class, he doesn't have to take the class. He just has to pay for it -- sometimes at a big discount. Some students can knock a full year off of their course requirements this way.

This option makes sense educationally. What we learn on the job sticks with us. Our work teaches us in the broadest sense. Why shouldn't adults receive formal educational credit for knowledge they have mastered -- not just learned in a classroom, but truly mastered -- on the job?

Only a few accredited colleges grant academic credit for work experience and life experience. Some that offer this don't publicize it. They can't afford to. Advertising is expensive. So, the story doesn't get out. That's why so few Americans know of this opportunity.

A degree from Harvard, Yale, or Princeton will have a lot more prestige than one from any of the colleges I discuss. But will that degree get its holder a job that pays 10 times more (after taxes) than a degree from a college that costs 10 times less? Not likely.

The fact is, a college student can afford to fund his own education if he is willing to use the system of seven loopholes that I have described in my special report.

WHY PAY RETAIL?

No college can afford to give information away. Yet there is almost nothing that is taught in a college that a student could not get in a local public library or on the Web.

If you have ever seen the movie, Good Will Hunting, you probably remember the scene in the restaurant where Will, a high school graduate who is a genius, blows away a hot-shot Harvard student. Will knows more than he does. That's because Will has spent a lot of time in the public library, and he remembers everything he has read. He tells the Harvard student that he is spending a fortune to learn what Will has learned at the public library.

Unlike Will Hunting, you may not know where to start looking for the information you need about earning a college degree at home at a price far lower than you ever thought possible. Even if you do know what you're looking for, you don't want to waste your time in a fruitless search for information that you may not find. Your time is too valuable.

I'll save you time. I have done your homework for you. I have said that there are seven loopholes in college education. Few people have heard of more than four of them, and few of these people have ever actually taken advantage of them. That's because they haven't put all of the pieces of the puzzle together. I have.

I have spent all of my adult life in libraries, including my own (about 13,000 volumes). I have spent thousands of hours on the World Wide Web. I have discovered where a student can earn an accredited four-year college degree at a price that most middle-class Americans can afford. Three minutes from now, you can have this information.

While there are books out there on this or that aspect of nontraditional college education, they are all aimed at parents or self-funding adults who are on their own financially. They are not designed to change a student's mind.

HOW TO ORDER MY REPORT

I can save you at least $9,700 in college expenses, or I'll send your money back. I figure that I should be paid one dollar for every $100 that I can save you. Does this sound reasonable?

I charge $97. Or pay $77 as a member of this site.

You have two years to decide whether I can save you at least $9,700. What have you got to lose?

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