The Founding Promise

$1,000,000

or your tuition back.

Finish the path. Four years after your child starts working, if he hasn’t cleared a million dollars, we send your tuition back — every dollar of it. You tell us he didn’t. That is the whole process: no bank statements, no forms, no lawyer, no argument.

Start the pathRead the terms

We are not predicting your child’s life.

We are not predicting your child’s life. We are pricing our own risk. A student who finishes this runs a real business with closed books, knows the system it sits inside, has read the men who built things and written about them every week, has stood and spoken to a live room forty times, and has built with the tools that are actually on the table now. We think that is what earning looks like from the inside. If we are wrong about that, we should not keep your money.

That is the whole argument. A guarantee costs the person making it, which is the only reason one is worth reading — and this one is written to be collected on, not defended against.

The path it is held against

Four years, 17 courses we wrote, in an order that builds. The mathematics and science sequence is yours to choose and sits outside the promise — we do not guarantee work we did not write.

Senior yearGrade 12
Via RhetoricaThe Long Fall of RomePhilosophy of the Good LifeEconomicsPrecalculusyou sourcePhysicsyou source
Junior yearGrade 11
Via RhetoricaThe Long Fall of RomeHow Influence WorksYour Own ShopAlgebra IIyou sourceChemistryyou source
Sophomore yearGrade 10
Ars LogicaUnsettlers: An American HistoryPractical ReasonKnow ThyselfA Nation of BuildersDemonstrandumBiologyyou source
Freshman yearGrade 9
GrammaticusHistory of Western CivilizationCitizens in the MakingProto-EngineeringPractical ScienceAlgebra Iyou source

The full map, with tracks and terms: the Founding Path.

What it takes

Finish the courses

Every Romeschool course on the path, in track order. Not the ones you source yourself — those are your call and we do not judge them.

Respect the sequence

Grammaticus, Ars Logica and 4 semesters of Wisdom & Character stand behind your student before he begins Via Rhetorica. Nobody walks into the capstone already skilled — that is what it is for — but he does not walk in empty-handed.

Do the work, in ink

Reading and writing logged as he goes, in the logbook and portfolio you are already keeping. The pace is yours. There is no minimum number of years and no maximum. A student who compresses the path finishes sooner and is fully eligible.

When the 4 years start

The four years begin when he begins earning — a wage or his own shop, whichever comes first — and never before he has finished the last course. The business he opens while still in school starts his ledger, not his clock.

Self-employment counts. A graduate who opens a business rather than taking a job is what this path is for, not an exception to be argued about later. And a student who goes on to college does not lose the window while he is there — the clock waits for him to begin.

How you collect

You write to us and tell us he did not reach it. That is the entire process.

No bank statements. No tax returns. No pay stubs, no employer letters, no forms to fill in and no one to argue with. We do not ask for documentation and we reserve no right to audit the figure you give us. A guarantee that is hard to claim is not a guarantee, so we removed every barrier we could find.

What comes back is the curriculum tuition you paid for that student — all of it, not a prorated share, and not reduced by how much of the course of study he used.

If we are wrong about what this does for your child, we should not keep your money.

Start the path

The promise has to be added before your student’s last lesson. Full terms: the Founding Promise.