As graduation approached, he was awarded a National Merit scholarship, and decided to attend Michigan State University.  He had intended to major in political science, but then he found out about the University's James Madison College, an interdisciplinary social sciences program.  So he chose to major in that, specializing in their "Justice, Morality and Constitutional Democracy" core, i.e., political philosophy.  However, since he still planned to do his graduate work in political science, he eventually took that subject as a second major.

He received his bachelor's degree in his two majors in 1979, and as time went on he realized that he was most interested in political history.  Since that subject is usually covered by history departments rather than by political science departments, he changed his major to history in 1981.  After a year in the doctoral program in history at the University of Michigan, during which he took some courses in intellectual history and ran up against a number of philosophical issues, he changed his major to philosophy and returned to Michigan State in 1985.

While maintaining his interest in political philosophy and its foundations in ethics, he acquired a deep interest in metaphysics and epistemology, which became his area of concentration in this field.  He received his doctorate in 1994.

After receiving his degree, Dr. Browne taught philosophy at two Michigan community colleges through the year 2000.  He has been teaching part-time for Central Michigan University in their College of Extended Learning, and adapted the core of his dissertation into a book, Necessary Factual Truth, which was published by University Press of America at the end of 2000.  Dr. Browne teaches "The Progressive Era" at Yorktown University.