Literally nothing terrified me more than a giant student loan, so I cancelled my dream of going to uni for compsci when I was in high school. It wasn't possible and my dad was recently disabled so it's not like my parents could help. I was able to get a grant for a vocational school and took an IT networking course, total student loan I had to take out was $8000 paid back many years ago.

I'm fortunate things worked out. How big is your student loan balance?