The four year degree is treated as the safe option and the thing you do if you are unsure. It is a large commitment and it deserves to be chosen rather than defaulted into.
The offer refused in month two is often better than the outcome reached in month fourteen, once you count what the intervening year actually took out of you.
Most questions families get stuck on about school have a person whose actual job is answering them. The difficulty is knowing which person, and how to ask.
The last quarter is when the people who owe you money start managing their cash instead of yours. Here is the order to work through when an invoice slips.