Sorry, it will be a long read but this topic hit harder than I expected....
We had a weird system in Hungary, apart from the traditional university and college there was a 2 years course system as well, it used up 2 of your 5 free years of university, but it just gave a certificate kind of thing (still called diploma) , not a university diploma. After my parents didn't let me to study film at uni I went to this 2 years course of Multimedia Development. We studied basic web design, programming, video editing and graphic design. It was just enough to give you an idea what you can do at these fields but it made me realise I want to make trailers for video games. I still knew nothing about games engines and how games are truly made, so I was just looking for any university which would teach something more in the field of media. Sadly this university was not among the free ones, so my parents didn't let me go there, even though they did have the money for it, just didn't made any effort to understand why the free universities were not good enough for me. They went on vacation abroad twice a year and swapped our 2 cars for a brand new one every 3 years... For reference the price of the university would have been one month's wage for one semester...
So I went for Programming as this was the only thing for free which had like a one semester media course in its master... But I dropped out after a year because all the maths they were forcing as to learn was too much for me and had nothing to do with what I wanted to learn. I'm sorry but you don't need that much maths for programming, this is the biggest bs ever... So I started to work and wanted to save up and pay that media university myself.... just parents then expected me to pay rent, plus they got used to the free internet and things I got at work so when I wanted to stop working and go to my uni of choice they didn't let me.
You could ask why I let them control me this way, please don't, I ask myself the same question enough times... I guess I was trying to be a good kid... and got my "reward" for it. But this is the beginning of the long saga why I moved to a different country and why I cut all ties with my family.
So I picked another free university and went to study Oriental languages and cultures so I could learn Japanese and one day leave and go to Japan and work for Square Enix (unattainable dreams are the best, right?) while still working full-time.... and had to drop out midway into my 2nd year because it was too much. I had no life, was constantly tired and got bad grades because couldn't prepare enough for my exams or attend all my classes due to work.
And now in the UK with universities and cost of living both being so high I can't save up for uni and can't afford to stop working to be able to study full-time. Open university would be a choice, but given my previous experience, would still want to drop down to part-time work, and as mentioned above that's not doable (plus I don't think they teach game design or Japanese at open uni at all...)
If I would win the lottery though, I would move to Alabama and go to uni there, so I could attend ProfNoctis' amazing Final Fantasy themed religion lessons live:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/PORAwbwqBg0?feature=oembed
