Get a College Education for FREE – Interview with Grant Aldrich | 422

Is it possible to get a college education for FREE?

Grant Aldrich is on a mission to make college more affordable and accessible for everyone.

http://OnlineDegree.com has now become a leading educational platform to help millions of people go back to school who’ve been unable to take that first critical step.

Grant firmly believes in the benefits of utilizing open source or Open Educational Resources (OER) for students. By using OER in higher education, student’s costs of learning are kept to an absolute minimum.

OER has given OnlineDegree.com the ability to achieve its goal of making the offering completely free for students and sets a positive example to encourage the adoption of these materials worldwide.

Basically the mission is to make college more attainable for everyone. Learn more about this in the episode.

Chris Miles (00:05):
Hello, my fellow Ripplers! This is Chris Miles. Your Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor. Hey guys, I’m welcoming you out for a wonderful show. A show that’s for you and about you. Those of you that work so freaking hard for your money, and you’re ready for your money to start working harder for you. Today! You want that freedom. That cash flow. That prosperity. Right now! Not 30 or 40 bazillion years from now, but today. So you have that life that you love. To be able to do what you love. To be with those that you love. But on top of that, it’s just not about prosper yourself, right? It’s much, much deeper than that because as you become financially prosperous, you can create your own ripple effect through people’s lives. You can be a blessing in the lives of others. And that is the world I’m here to create. So thank you so much for allowing me to create a ripple effect through you with this show.

Chris Miles (00:50):
And, and of course, thank you guys for also keeping that ripple effect going. Cause you guys keep sharing. You keep bingeing and everything else. So thank you so much for joining us today. You guys are a big part of this I couldn’t do without you. Hey, as a reminder, check out our website, MoneyRipples.com There is an ebook, Beyond Rice and Beans, Seven Secrets to Free Up Cash Today. That you can download for free. And by the way, it’s like a whopping 28 pages because I put page breaks in it. So it’s like a 15 minute read. Great stuff in there, but you also check out on our blogs. There’s actually some of our YouTube videos that are up now of this very show. So if you actually want to watch the show, you can actually start watch on YouTube as well. So check it out.

Chris Miles (01:29):
Alright! So today I’ve got a special guest and you know, I keep finding some interesting people and this is definitely no exception. You know, this was somebody who reached out and said, Hey, you gotta have Grant Aldrich on your show because you know, it’s funny, my wife had actually even brought up about, you know, doing online degrees, but even like having ways to have it paid for. And I thought that was intriguing. And within the same week that she said that someone says, Hey, you need to have Grant on your show. So that’s what I got. Guys. I have grant here with us and just to let you know, grant actually runs a company OnlineDegree.com and now he founded this one. It was a real purpose driven mission, right? The mission is this, to make college more accessible and affordable for everyone.

Chris Miles (02:13):
Now, after graduating college with an overwhelming amount of debt. Grant was actually determined to change how students embark on their college education. He has spent his entire career working at startups with nearly 15 years of experience and two prior exits to a publicly traded company. He’s also been a board member and donor to a number of non-profits and advisor to many public traded companies and a guest speaker at seminars and graduate school courses. And today, well, especially when I bring him on and say, all right, whether you’re someone you’ve got kids or whether it’s yourself and you’re thinking about going and get your degree again, how can you do it in a way where you don’t have to go to pay millions of dollars to make crappy amounts of money? And so that’s why we have a Grant here on our show today. So grant welcome!

Grant Aldrich (02:54):
Hey, Chris! Thanks for having me!

Chris Miles (02:55):
Absolutely, man. So tell us about your story and what inspired this. Like you mentioned that you went through a lot of debt, right? You know, tell us more about that.

Grant Aldrich (03:03):
Yeah. I left college with just an immense amount of debt and I seemingly made all of the right choices. So I took a traditional path. Graduated high school. Went to the best school I could get to. And I even came in with AP courses and all kinds of things that had me graduate as a sophomore. So I had a year already finished and I still graduated with just a ton of debt. And that left a real mark on me for many years because I didn’t pay it off until my late twenties. And I was in a position recently where I had exited my last company and I really was sitting around trying to figure out, what do I want to do to make a big difference and enjoy my work far more than I had before?

Grant Aldrich (03:50):
And I just kept coming to higher Ed. My parents were teachers and a bad taste in my mouth that had been sitting there for so long and everything just kind of came together to try to make higher education, more affordable, more accessible.

Chris Miles (04:04):
Yeah. How did that even come to be for you guys?

Grant Aldrich (04:08):
You know, this was definitely a meandering approach. I just started with the mission. And I think that’s a really cool thing to do as an entrepreneur. You just start with a mission. I want to make college affordable and accessible. And I didn’t know how we were going to do it. It was definitely something I stumbled upon and tried to figure out. And finally, we came to, we’re going to create a modern alternative to the community college. And so people can come on the platform. Get started in 60 seconds. Take as many college level courses as they’d like. Earn credit towards their degree at universities across the country. We do it all for free.

Chris Miles (04:44):
Now, how is that possible?

Grant Aldrich (04:45):
It was just to kind of complete it. Not only do we provide all this for free, we provide support services. We organize discounts for our students on their behalf. So for example, you come in, take a bunch of units that can lower the cost of your degree, but then we go above and beyond that and get the universities to give you another discount. So you may get 10%, 20% off the cost of your degree just from coming through our program. And so to answer your question, how do we do it, you kind of have to look into the dynamic of how the system works. So the benefit for the student is probably obvious, right? I’ve got, instead of just making this big leap to go back in getting your degree, paying full price and having to just figure it out on the go, we provide an option to wait in the pool where you could save a bunch of money sometimes up to 30% 40% of your degree.

Grant Aldrich (05:34):
And to give it a kind of, you know, kick the tires a bit, see what classes are of interest, you know, get used to learning in an online format. Prove you’ve got the time management, all that. That benefits probably obvious. What people don’t realize, it’s an immense benefit for the universities as well. So for the universities, it’s a little known fact that they are desperate for good students. And when I say good, I mean, students who will finish their program. Who are prepared when they show up. Who don’t need a lot of orientation programs on how to learn online and how to make sure they work courses into their daily life. It’s really valuable. So inherently when you’re going through progressing through the courses, you’re making yourself a better student. So the entire platform is sponsored by the universities to make it a true win-win for the student and the school.

Chris Miles (06:26):
Interesting. Yeah. I can see when they’re college, that’s a big deal. Especially if they want that, the impressive numbers show that people actually graduate and finishing complete. Right? Versus, you know, it’s like, you know, University of Hawaii, where people used to go on vacation, then drop out. You know.

Grant Aldrich (06:41):
Yeah. I wish we all could go to University of Hawaii and just skip class all day.

Chris Miles (06:45):
That’s the one place you won’t go to do online education.

Grant Aldrich (06:48):
No! Definitely not! Yeah. More like, you know, upstate New York where it’s nice and cold. Right? But yeah. So the whole process, getting people back to school and doing it this way has just been really successful. It’s just really worked because it’s really created a whole new paradigm.

Chris Miles (07:05):
Yeah. And who funds this? Like how is this funded?

Grant Aldrich (07:08):
All by the university partnerships. So, you know, when I first started, I looked at doing a non-profit. And the problem is, is that, there’s actually a lot of rules on how non-profits were able to generate revenue. And so I didn’t want a system where we would be, couldn’t do tuition. Right? I wanted no tuition. That was a key thing. And I didn’t want to be dependent upon donations. And so if you’re non-profit, you take revenue in certain ways you can lose your non-profit status. So I decided, Nope, we’re just going to keep it. We’re a benefit Corp. And we’re going to make it funded completely by the universities.

Chris Miles (07:41):
Great! And now, I know what you have as a tagline says, The First Years For Free. Is it just the first year or is it the entire college experience? And how does that work?

Grant Aldrich (07:50):
It could actually be more than the first year. You know, we’ve tried, because we’re a new concept and it’s a little different. And you know, I made that comparison to a community college, which is something everybody knows. But we are different because you know, when you come on our platform, you could take one course. You could take all 15 that we offer. And you could then still get the discount on different schools. So it’s far more flexible than a community college. In terms of that flexibility, you don’t have to go to class. It’s all online at your own pace. So the goal was to make something where I looked at the community college systems thing. This is a very rigid system. What if I don’t want to get my full associates degree? What if I just want to get a little bit, save, and then go to the right school of my choosing? Or what if I want something that’s more accessible from my heavy work life and my family life and all these things. So really that’s what I tried to design a better system for. And so, yeah, I mean, anybody can come in, they can take one class or you can save up as much as 40% on your degree, depending on the school you go to. And the discounts that we have.

Chris Miles (08:52):
Wow! That’s incredible! Well, like you said, it’s great that people have working schedule if they already have their own business or they’re already going, you know, they’re working all the time. Like they don’t want to spend a lot of time. They want to be able to do at their own pace and that sort of thing. Right? It sounds like you’ve definitely provided a solution for that.

Grant Aldrich (09:07):
That’s it. This is built for the working adults. So something people don’t realize is that working adults have become the real students in higher education. Not the 18 year old. And there’s an estimated 35 to 40 million of those adults who are not taking that first step. So I really tried to create a solution that just met all the impediments that were stopping people from getting started. And yeah, you’re right. One of them is that, Hey, we’re busy. Adults are busy. We’ve got kids, got jobs, you’ve got responsibilities. We can’t leave all of that three times a week to go to class in the middle of the day. Not conducive for what we’re doing. It’s gotta be 30 minutes while we’re cooking dinner. 30 minutes on the couch at night. That has to be conducive to that learning environment. And then of course the cost. If you’re not 18 years old, you can’t amortize the cost of a degree over your lifetime like you can when you’re young. We’re thirties, forties, we have to be able to get an affordable degree that will actually help us get a better career. That’s not going to break the bank. And so I think really what we’ve done too, is balanced the ROI of getting a degree now. And the cost.

Chris Miles (10:13):
Right! Exactly! And that’s been one of my biggest hangups with school, right? Cause I dropped out of college with what, not even a class. It was a project, one project away from getting my bachelor’s. Right? And then I decided to go into being an entrepreneur just to gain that experience that was going to go to the business consulting. So I was going to finish my MBA. And by after I went to the business, I said, well, what the heck? These degrees seem worthless, you know. In comparison to how much time and money I have to put into this, versus I can just go out and make money no. You know, as an entrepreneur. And that definitely was more enticing. And this kind of seems like it’s a good hybrid between the two. It’s like saying, Hey, do I want to get the ROI? Plus the time I have to put, by the way, I did try to actually go and finish my degree. Five years later. And they said, all right, great, well, you just have to take another semester and a half of full time credits. Cause it had been over five years. I said, well, forget that, you know, there’s no reason I should get a sociology degree and have to spend a year and a half going full time to school when I was already retired, you know? So, Oh yeah. Make logical sense at that point, right?

Grant Aldrich (11:17):
Oh yeah. Well, you know, the other problem is, Is that so many schools out there are not adult friendly, which is what you’re kind of touching on. And so the other thing that we’ve done is we’ve tried to only partner with schools that are adult friendly. And so to that point, you know, what does adult friendly mean? These are schools that aren’t going to give you a lot of sweat for being five years out of the classroom. They look past that. They’re far more accommodating to the modern adult or working adult. And so they view a lot more support for working adults. The classes are online. The restaurant pays, you know, all those things that help and not give you the experience that you had. But you’re right, you know, for a bigger perspective, not everybody needs to get a degree. Some careers, you should have it because you had the edge for your job and you can get that big promotion.

Grant Aldrich (12:01):
Or if it’s a necessity. Like if I want to be a teacher. But for you and I, you know, we’re both entrepreneurs. What’s great is that what we’ve now branched out to is into certifications. And so in addition to degrees, we offer discounted certifications with credit universities that are better than anything else out there. Where, let’s say you want to be a bookkeeper. Well, you can get a certification with a certificate from the university, for your clients in book keeping with Quick Books and all of this. To basically just prepare you for a career as being your own boss. So that way, you know, you’ve got something. You don’t have to be a CPA. You’ve got something. When you go into that room, when you’re pitching your new clients, you know, I’m certified by University of X and it looks really good. So I’m glad we’ve really added that. So I think it’s complimented the situations that you’re talking about, where not everybody needs a degree.

Chris Miles (12:50):
Right. That’s true. Now you mentioned, of course it’s perfect for the working adult. What about for those that are the typical young adult college age? You know, is this a good fit for them? Cause I know again, a ton of people that will say, how do I pay for college? How do I save for college, all this kind of stuff. And so I guarantee you there’s many, many listeners saying, all right, I may not need a degree, but what about my kids?

Grant Aldrich (13:12):
Yeah. You know, it is. Although it hasn’t been open for them. I’ll explain why. When we first got started, I had the working adult in mind. So we purposely excluded it to anybody who was under 18 or any international students. And my logic was, was that I wanted to make sure we came out of the gate for our first MVP product, that we had a really good experience for that core demographic. And since then it’s just exploded. And so now we’re going back and saying, okay, we can expand now and go into high school students international because we get so many students knocking on the door saying we want it. In fact, for every one adult now that we have in, three knock on the door that we turn away who are either international or under 18. And so it’s a big problem. Yeah. So we’re working on now working out the intricacies of now opening up the platform for all those people. It’s not ready yet. Soon!

Chris Miles (14:07):
Soon. So if they got somebody who’s in their mid teens, this is probably the perfect time.

Grant Aldrich (14:12):
Yeah! So I would say, you know, check back maybe after the summer. We’ll be good to go.

Chris Miles (14:16):
Okay. That’s pretty soon.

Grant Aldrich (14:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very actively working on it.

Chris Miles (14:19):
That’s great! Awesome! Well this is fantastic! I know it’s a, just like incredible niche, you know, that just to see that that’s even available and even possible for people to even get, you know, the ability to even take some courses and essential, not only have they come out of pocket initially. Right? I think that’s just incredible. So if people want to learn more about it, where should they go?

Grant Aldrich (14:40):
Well, Chris, thank you man! And you know, it really is trying to just spread the word about it that, you know, in addition to what we do, there are a bunch of other little known secrets on how you can save college. You know, cause I think so many people fall into the trap where they just go in the front door and they just accept the fact, that’s it got to pay full time tuition. And the only ways to save previously were scholarships or community college. And both of those have tons of problems. They’re terrible options for an adult to try to do. And I can go into that later, but anyhow, yeah. So to come on, just go to OnlineDegree.com you can follow the project if it’s not something that, you know, if you’re not interested in certification or degree and we’ve got all kinds of info there on ways you can save. It’s really cool. So let’s say that would be a good one. And I’m also available on LinkedIn, you know, people want to connect.

Chris Miles (15:24):
Great! Okay. We got to open it up for a few more minutes for sure. So grants or whatever you’re talking about right there. Like what are the non traditional ways that people might miss out on? You don’t have to give all the details, all the secrets, but just give us a few.

Grant Aldrich (15:38):
Yeah. You know, you almost have to look at going back to higher ed as like you’re hacking your way through. And I mean that in a good way. Yeah. Cause you’re taking pieces off the shelf from numerous destinations. So what’s kind of good by starting in our platform is that we provide a good base. So, okay. Let’s say we aggregate all the adult friendly schools. So you know, which ones are the ones that are going to treat you the way that you would assume you’d be treated, going back to school. And so you start there and then we can map out what courses you can take for free. Then we can look at what kind of discounts are available that you can take advantage of at the different institutions. And then from there, we also compliment that this is something that most people don’t know, there’s these exams you can take where it’s not like an AP exam.

Grant Aldrich (16:23):
It’s not as hard as that is, but they’re all about subject matter expertise where you can test out of a course. And so you can take, instead of taking, let’s say a full semester, long class on, you know, we can make this up, but history one. You can take, we have a history course. So this isn’t exactly the same. You can knock it out with our history course. But to give the example, you could take a prep course, right online, just short term. Take this exam and then remove the requirement when you come to school. So little techniques like this, just chip away at the amount of units you have to take at the actual university. Cause at the end of the day, you have to get, let’s say 120 units to get your bachelor’s degree at a college. And each course is three, four units, et cetera. The more that you can finish for free or at a discount rather than paying full price for tuition at that school, the better.

Chris Miles (17:13):
That’s true. I remember, cause I lived for two years in Japan during my college years. Right? So I came back my sophomore year of college and they said, Hey, you can test out of this. And so I essentially got like 16 language arts credits. You know, for no charge. I was just able to get that knocked out. Right. And you know, kind of accelerate a little bit to the bachelors. I still had to take a bunch of more courses, but at least I was able to say, all right, well that’s off the list now. I’ve got plenty of, almost had too many credits by the time I was getting my bachelors, you know?

Grant Aldrich (17:43):
That’s fantastic! Yeah. That’s a good example actually. Right. You know, you don’t take a language class if you’re comfortable enough with the language. You could test out of it. Yeah. Great example.

Chris Miles (17:51):
Yeah. Awesome! Well, great! So again, everybody check out OnlineDegree.com you know, just, yeah. If that’s something that either for yourself or for someone you know, check it out. See what resources are available. Reach out to them and see if that’s something that’s a fit for you and something that could actually be the very thing you’ve been looking for. So Grant, I really appreciate your time today. It’s been awesome!

Grant Aldrich (18:11):
Chris, thanks a lot for having me on!

Chris Miles (18:13):
You bet, man. And everybody else, make it a wonderful and prosperous week and we’ll see you later.