Joe Bast is the founding president of the Heartland Institute in Chicago and one of the founders of the State Policy Network.  I have known him since the late 1980s, but I never knew about his eight  year college education.  Thanks to the Pope Center for publishing his inspiring story here.

A sample:

Looking back, I think I got the greatest education available in America during the 1970s and 1980s. It was at times a total intellectual immersion, so intense that I remember walking into a telephone pole while debating with myself the differences in how Kant, Hegel, and Adam Smith defined human nature. The professors were amazing, the classes small, and there was no hint of political correctness. There really was a set of encyclopedias behind the bar at Jimmy’s, to settle arguments in the smokiest bar and grill in the world.