College Aviation Programs and Other Paths to Becoming a Pilot

Everyone on this subreddit will say "don't go to college for flight training, it's useless and more expensive." Now, with everything, that's a broad answer to a nuanced question.

Timelime

College training does take longer. It's a 4 year degree, so expect to stay 4 years. It's definitely no accelerated program. I see many people saying get everything done ASAP, but you're going to pretty much need a 4 year degree eventually. There's a few options on navigating college:

1. Attend a 4 year college aviation program. You get a degree and flight training done. This is the appeal of these programs. You'll be paying for flight training on top of tuition, but you can use federal financial aid to pay for both.

2. Attend college for some other degree and do flight training on the side. Now this is generally the recommended method I see on r/flying, but it's not really expanded beyond this. A lot of factors can prevent this route, the biggest being finances. You're going to have to pay for college and training separately, with federal financial aid only covering college costs, not flying costs.

3. Skip college and attend an accelerated program. Now this method is most frowned upon here, especially if you attend ATP. The appeal to people for this is to get training done faster, but you don't have a degree that you will eventually need, and accelerated programs are often extremely expensive, and they want you to pay upfront. See my post on ATP Flight School (reddit link). The upfront cost drives people to consider loans, so please see my post on Unsecured Loans for Flight Training.

4. Get a degree in a high demand field, work in said field, earn money, pay for flight training. This will take the longest, but may be the most cost effective.

5. Community college. There are several CCs that have aviation programs. This may be significantly cheaper than a 4-year college, especially with in state tuition. You can always transfer to a 4 year school to get your bachelors, or even an online degree to tick that box. 

Now, one of the caveats of Point 2: lots of people say an aviation degree is worthless and get a degree in something else as a backup. On the flip side, if you get a degree in something other than aviation as a "backup", don't use it and just fly, get furloughed in 10 years, that backup degree may be just as useless as that aviation degree. Lots of degrees if you don't use, employers will be wary of hiring you. So, getting a degree outside of aviation is really only a short term backup. Another point: if you're getting furloughed, the economy is most likely in a recession, and other employers will likely not be hiring either (sometimes not though, look at Spirit in 2024/2025, economy great, company struggling). Now I can't tell you what degrees are better as backups than others, but all I can tell you if you choose this route, get a degree in something you enjoy. 

Cost of College Aviation Programs

The biggest gripe I see about college aviation programs is the price. You will be paying for flight training on top of tuition, room and board, meal plan, books, etc. College is already expensive, add flight training in the mix, it gets even more expensive. Flight training will generally cost around $70k-$100k.

Now, as I will discuss in the next section, what a lot of people forget, if you attend a college aviation program, FAFSA aid may increase due to the cost of flight training. I say "may" because this may be just the college I attended. But, my college financial aid office calculated how much you are expecting to spend, which when they put into the computer, spit out a higher financial aid that I would receive. It wasn't much, but it was a factor. This may make college aviation programs on par or cheaper than flying in the side of a unrelated degree. If you don't attend an college aviation program, FAFSA cannot be used.

Ways to Make Things Cheaper

There's a few ways you can make flying cheaper. Please see this post on paying for training and a note on efficiency of training. 

• Like discussed last paragraph, FAFSA (studentaid.gov) can help if you attend a college aviation program. If you attend college, you should fill out FAFSA. They offer grants, government loans, etc. On a note for government loans: these loans are backed by the US government. What does that mean? Rates are much, much lower than a private student loan. My loans are around 4.5-5.5%. compare that to a private loan of 15%. Government loans have two types: subsidized and unsubsidized. Subsidized means you don't have to pay until you graduate. Unsubsidized means you have to pay something immediately (might just be interest while attending college, I honestly can't remember). Another thing to note, government loans can be forgiven through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, but you have to work for the government for that to happen (if your goal is to work for the FAA, there you go). NOTE: the 2025 "Big Beautiful Bill" has made federal borrowing more restrictive. This may or may not affect your federal loan borrowing power.

• Another possible method is community college. Sometimes CC gets a bad rep, but in my state, all classes at the CCs and state schools are the same (the Math 100 class is the same at both CC and State 4 year school). What does this mean? You can take classes at the CC for significantly cheaper price. A normal 5-credit class (quarter system) in my state costs around $700-$800. Now how does that apply to you? Good question! You can take all your Gen Ed classes at the CC and transfer to a 4 year college with all the Gen Eds complete. Which means you just need to complete the aviation classes. 

• Another method similar to the last point, you can complete your flight training at a community college. There are many around that have aviation programs. You complete your flight training at the CC, get your associates, transfer to a 4 year college and get a 4 year degree. Apparently people do this at my local schools: Clover Park Technical College, then transfer to Green River College to finish a 4 year degree. You could also just get your associates and then try to get hired at a regional without the 4 year degree, and do the 4 year degree online when flying for said regional. Please do know that not having a 4 year degree will impede your hiring marketability. 

• Now, if you're a parent reading this, or you are still in high school, the last point is also ties into this: duel enrollment. My state has a program that allows junior and senior high school students to attend classes at your local community college, either in addition to high school classes, or instead of high school classes. This program is either very cheap, if not free (I honestly can't remember, and probably depends on your state). This means you can complete all your Gen Eds before even graduating high school for a cheaper price. 

• Scholarships. There's lots of scholarships out there, not just for aviation. There's many, many general scholarships that don't apply to certain programs and degrees. From what I've heard, tons of these scholarships barely have any applicants. Apply to as many as you can. Lots of small organizations have scholarships as well, such as local EAA chapters, not just the main EAA. Many colleges have merit scholarships as well that they give to students. These come from the endowment of the college, and are usually based off of your high school GPA and test scores, if I remember correctly. Smaller private schools are more likely to have them than enormous state schools. AviationStart has a list of aviation scholarships worth over $20 million dollars. 

• GI Bill. If you or a parent has the GI Bill, specifically VR&E, and they are willing to use it on you, that's a fantastic way to get college aviation paid for. If this is you, [RTAG](https://www.rtag.org/) is the organization for you.

• Now, this one will be less likely, but I'm still throwing it out there: tuition remission. If your parents work at a college or university, they may have tuition remission benefits for you. If you don't want to attend the school your parents work at, you can possibly transfer those benefits to another school using the National Tuition Exchange program. Tuition remission almost makes up for the shitty wages colleges tend to pay....

• While attending college, there are work study jobs that give you free room and board, the most notable and common is being an RA. That can shave off a few thousand a year, and some colleges give meal plans to RAs as well.

If I'm forgetting any, let me know and I'll add it.

Experiences

If anyone wants their experience added here, I'd be happy to add it. 

I can't talk about college experiences without mentioning r/flying member dash_trash's comment on Embry-Riddle. You can read the original here. And here is an updated reflection on that post (2024).

FrankThePilot

"It may not be popular on reddit but I'll tell you my path. 

I knew the community college I wanted to go to and I knew I just wanted to fly, get my ratings asap, and move on and up so I did a full year's worth of college classes while in high school. When I got to the community college, I went 0 time to CFI in 9 months, got my multi-engine rating not that long after. 

After getting all my ratings, I instructed for a year and 4 months or so. I had the R-ATP authorization at 1250 hours, so I went to a regional. I went from 0 time to regional FO in a little over 2 years. Once I completed training at the regional, I did a 4-year degree online.

Granted, this was when regionals were hiring like crazy, BUT you need to have your flight time and be ready for the moment to ride the next wave. Additionally, I'm at a legacy airline now and was never asked about my education. 

The total cost for all of my flight training and the bachelor's? $40- $45k. I don't know how I could have beat the cost or the amount of time it took. It was my best path and set me up for a career of great seniority and on top of the savings on the front end, allowed me to have a few more years of top earnings at the back end of my career as well."

Me: 

"I had parents who worked at a university, so I was privileged to have tuition remission. So pretty much the only thing I had to pay was flight training, room and board, and food. I did also eventually get a work study job that covered room and board. I had Pell Grants and 20k of subsidized loans from the government, as well as a small scholarship. I don't think I paid more than 10k out of pocket."

Revisions

December 2024: added dash_trash updated reflections on ERAU

July 2025: made some minor formatting and wording. Added a note about the Big Beautiful Bill. 

April 2026: migrated to blogger, made some small changes.