Unfortunately if it takes you 4 years to significantly upskill in tech, you are learning way too slow to survive in this industry. Most of the major innovators I know are dropouts, because they realized college is suited to train you to work in academia, where very few jobs exist, almost no one worth working for cares about degrees anymore, and the debt only makes surviving harder.

IMO the best education and credentials come from picking interesting projects you have no idea how to do, then learn everything in your way to ship them as open source so potential employers can see your work.

If you can get a degree on a scholarship for free, wonderful, but college should be viewed as more of a hobby or a way to network, rather than a way of obtaining marketable technical skills.