Ask HN: Anyone have experience quitting work to go back to school?

The more and more I research going back to school, the more I’m convinced that majority of undergrad online or programs designed to be “accessible” to non traditional, working adults are scams, even from otherwise well regarded schools. I’ve seen maybe a handful of decent online CS programs, but that’s about it.

It seems that if I wanted to go back to school, especially for anything outside of CS I would have to quit working.

Obviously there are a few issues here. Money is big things, and personally, I’d be unlikely to be able to afford full time school unless it were very cheap (some state schools around me qualify here if I could get my residency status straight) or has its own generous aid package (these schools will be unlikely to admit me). God knows the regular aid system won’t give me anything. Additionally it’s a huge time investment and a rather binary outcome. Either I will gain the valuable credentials I want that allow to to make the moves I want, or I will be stuck with a credential and knowledge that are basically useless to me. And then of course there’s a lost wages aspect, but that’s one of the least of my worries at the moment.

Has any dropped out of [whatever industry] to go back to school part time? How did it work out?