Do community college first. In my county, Dean’s list students get refunded. (Didn’t know that until my kid was on the dean’s List and got a check back)
Scholarships. Billions in scholarships go untapped. One of my sons was on a high school competitive robotics team. The college he ended up going to gave a $20,000 scholarship just for being on a team. He also earned several others.
Get a job. Same son got a job in his field when he was a Junior. It paid his last two years of school. He’s pretty well compensated and is almost debt free in under a year. He shares a rental house with several other guys, drives a 2004 Chevrolet and lives on Mac and Cheese, just like in college.
In all fairness, it was an engineering job and was pretty well compensated.
Get a job, defer school and live cheap for a couple years. Live really cheap.
One of my daughters is taking classes through Unbound.com. They are an online school class aggregator. She’s enrolled through a known university but the classes themselves are through many schools. The cost is dirt cheap.
Most importantly, Don’t go to college looking for a career path or for “the experience”. College should be for people going into hard science type careers.
Explore apprenticeships. The skilled trades pay extremely well and generally have no debt involved. The everyone is going to college scam is a lie and has destroyed the value and honor of skilled trades jobs.
The average tradesman is over 50 and every trade is screaming for technicians.
One of my kids skipped college and got his Commercial Drivers License. He’s on a highway somewhere in Michigan right now. At 19, he’s independent and debt free.
You mentioned that about every trade is screaming for technicians. Some of them might be screaming for a long time as they don’t pay that well. I was one for many years & learned the hard way. Still, if you can find the right job & get apprenticeship type training, it’s probably a better deal than college. I was in the automotive trade & saw a few young techs overdo it on tool purchases & ended up with a big bill & possibly repossession of their tools. That particular trade requires a lot of tools, but some went a bit out of control on it.