I went without in order to finance my education - knowing that one day it would pay for itself with a decent paying job.
I did that too, and still needed student loans, and it is paying for itself now.
I'm not sure how you found enough time in the day to work low paying jobs and get enough money to afford tuition.. I had a decently paying technician job in school, it helped to defray costs (I love that term) but there was no way it was going to pay for tuition during engineering school full time. Probably wouldn't even pay enough if I didn't go to class, didn't study, and didn't do the silly amounts of homework and project work every day. I think some of my friends went out to the bars, but that's just anecdotal as far as I'm concerned. I think I picked the wrong major.
For profit universities (the majority of them) are a joke and sell hopes and dreams to people. I couldn't tell you how many people came out of those places when I did recruiting and were under the impression they were awesome and deserved 50k+ a year but really are worth about 15/hr. I hope more of these places shut down.
Way back when, we interviewed a bunch of ITT grads (like 5 before we got wise) to backfill my technician role when I left to go back to school, and then we gave up. We told the school to stop sending resumes.
My wife went to MCI (Medical Careers Institute) and it was the same bill-of-goods bullshit, but she's a badass and got a good job out of it (she already had a proper major/minor college degree to show she could think). Then the bottom dropped out of the field she was in, and now she does something different.
We always laugh about the amount of schools popping up that have certificate programs, and how many industries won't hire you for something unless you have a certificate in it. It's really bad in the medical industry... It's a fabricated need that can be sold in order for a school to make money by promising employers candidates that are prepared. My wife would need 7 or 8 certificates to get hired now for the same job that she did for 10 years without any of the certificates.
I think my sister in law saw a job that required a certificate for something loosely related to phone etiquette for a reception position...? I hope it was a 1-day course, with a generous amount of time for lunch.