I'll be finishing my Masters this year and I haven't got a bit of regret, if piloting ever fails (which it easily can) you can always fall back on the hard work you put into the degree and still be in a great position. If you didn't do the degree you'd have to start applying for jobs where competition is fierce and the pay is low. Going down that route would certainly be in the right direction but who knows how long it could take.
To share my experience, my mistake at your age was being completely deluded about the money required to fly, I was at the time working in a supermarket earning about £4 an hour which meant to fly a single hour I needed to do 30 hours work, that's nearly a weeks work for 1 single flying hour.. You need to also take into account that you need to travel to these schools and sometimes if for example you trained in the USA, you need to get there, eat, drink and sleep somewhere which will cost a lot! With a low paid job it is going to take a long time to get enough for these things and that's whilst you give up time with friends and don't spend money on anything. It is a massive test and for me I was interested in engineering and decided I would go down that route until I could pay for flying training comfortably.
CTC to be honest is a pipe dream for many simply because of the amount of money you need to raise, don't believe the hype, you can be a pilot for half the amount they ask for. Even at CTC unless you get on one of the coveted schemes, you are still essentially following an integrated ATPL course with no guarantee that you will gain anything from them but a piece of paper.
My advice is to stick with the degree, work hard and at the same time get a part time job and work slowly towards your PPL. Even if it means using your student loan to fly every so often, the job will keep things ticking over nicely whilst you start to a build a small cash pile. Once you finish you'll have a handy amount of flight hours too which puts you in a good position to get your PPL and fingers crossed your degree will open doors to a better paid job which will help fund the remainder of your training.
Also do not believe people who say degrees are useless, doing a pointless degree in a pointless subject is useless and there is a lot of people doing those kind of degrees. Any good degree in engineering,physics,sciences,classics,mathematics,economics, law is in HIGH demand these days, there is a lot of competition out there but that comes with every job.
If you want any more info then give me a PM!
Good Luck!
Last edited by squarehole; 21st Jul 2013 at 19:59.