Raising children to be productive adults depends more on children learning to work hard, be free from addictions to drugs, booze, and porn, and learning to follow instructions from parents, teachers, coaches and employers. College is not recommended if it represents more of an opportunity to delay adult responsibilities and delay hard work. But there are cases where a graduating senior's life calling and career goals require a college education, and fathers do well to keep those doors open for their children in a way that eliminates or greatly reduces debt accumulation along the way.

Our main approach for our children to graduate debt free from college was 1) Do not provide tax returns thus preventing children from applying for FAFSA. FAFSA is a loan sharking scheme. 2) Have our children well positioned for full tuition scholarships at quality in-state schools. 3) Keep parental financial contributions conditional on specific majors and academic progress. 4) Develop a work ethic and educational attainment in high school to maximize probability of success in college. 5) Be consistent in daily prayer for children through high school and college – not just for finances, but also for God's grace, for character formation, to avoid the sinful desires of youth, and for wisdom. 6) If needed, the preferred cheaper option is living at home and attending a state school within driving distance. (In most states, living at home produces real college expenses at least half of what college costs for students living away from home.)

Just say NO! To FAFSA. If you allow your children to use your tax returns for their initial FAFSA applications, parents never have another opportunity to prohibit their children from accepting tens of thousands in loans each year to cover tuition and living expenses to the most expensive schools to which they may be admitted. Privacy laws PREVENT lenders and schools from even disclosing loans to parents much less requiring students to get or heed advice from parents. And the loan amounts can keep growing as long as your child is enrolled in college. Many parents are surprised when after a couple semesters of the partying college life, their children are ignoring their advice and signing for any loan required to keep the lifestyle going. In most cases, FAFSA is not a genuine NEED, it is an expensive lifestyle choice.

As our children approached high school, we moved to a state with good schools, affordable tuition, and a generous full tuition scholarship program that was automatic if high school GPA and ACT requirements were met. Before you think you can't afford to do that, watch my video on "How I Made a Million Dollars as a Homeschooling Dad." We worked hard to make sure our children qualified for those scholarships.
Since our children preferred to live away from home for college, some parental contributions were needed for their living expenses. Each semester when we wrote those checks, we had a written "memorandum of understanding" with each student. Here, we specified expectations relating to major, course load, and GPA that needed to be met for the "mom and dad scholarship program" to continue the following semester. All merit based scholarship programs have GPA requirements. Our requirements were essentially ensuring that the student met the state's GPA requirements for the full tuition scholarship. It was clear that if the student lost the tuition scholarship, their path to continuing college was moving back home and attending a more affordable, but less prestigious state school in our home county.

On the academic side, our high school goals for college bound students was to qualify initially for those generous scholarships AND to have the work ethic needed to maintain the required GPAs in challenging STEM majors. Dual enrollement policies facilited attending a local college in 11th and 12th grades to begin getting a taste of real college coursework, but beginning with one or two college courses at a time rather than a full course load.
While praying for the evening meal, I began the habit of asking the children in high school if there were any prayer requests. Often their hands shot up to make their requests. God honors fathers by being quick to answer their prayers when they intercede as priests for their children. Prayer works better as a daily lifestyle than being reserved for emergencies.

Scripture warns that "Idle hands are the devil's workshop." The above program not only helped all our children graduate from college debt free, but it also motivated a high level of focus and hard work through their college years. Being busy on course work and research and campus jobs had the intended side effect of simply not having enough time to risk giving into many of the temptations toward destructive behaviors that leads to changes to easier majors, low GPAs, stretching out college to 5-6 years, and the massive debt accumulation that accompanies all of that.