Andersen graduated from high school in 1926 and became a member of the first class of the newly established Muskegon Junior College. Upon graduating two years later, he received the first diploma awarded by the school. While in college, he held a sales job with J. J. Fagan and Company, a real estate firm, and also worked as a stringer for the Muskegon "Chronicle", while starting a newspaper for the junior college. Not long after, he and his brothers started their own company, Muskegon Realty, which also sold casualty insurance for the Mercury Insurance Company. "I matured fast in those years. I was selling homes and farms. I was selling insurance. I was editing a college newspaper and stringing for a daily newspaper. I was studying and learning about things I had never known existed. It was almost an incredible time."