I had a poor high school experience and barely graduated without an SAT score. To eat I had to go to work immediately. I didn't realize for several years that I could get into the local CC without an SAT score.
When I did, I started taking remedial classes, trying to rebuild what I should have learned in high school. After a couple years I entered a real major, graduated with a couple A.S. degrees and an almost 4.0. It cost something like $50/credit hour when I went. I think the entire program cost me under $5k. Today, it's about $12k. I think I still could have swung it by just adding another year.
This got me immediate entrance in the local state school where I entered as a Junior and finished up my undergraduate degree -- again while working full time. It was paid for almost entirely by grants. I think it was a little over $10 for those final two years. Today it's about double again. Harder, but again, doable.
I had to work full-time the entire time, got married in the middle, it took me almost 7 years, but at every increment I was able to use my advancing education to get radically better jobs.
Later I went back, got an M.S., but this time I had a few years of high paying tech jobs and I just wrote a check every semester. It also wasn't terribly expensive.
The CC covered all of the core courses I could have possibly wanted, and the instructors were pretty much as good as what I encountered at state school. In fact, of my professors, most of the ones who were the most dedicated to educating their students were my CC professors. When I entered University, I was incredibly prepared for the academic life there and had no problem making it through the program with another near 4.0 GPA.
If I had a second chance, I would follow this route again, even if I had money and better opportunity growing up. I also found many life-long friends at CC who were on a similar life-path and it's been enjoyable watching each other as we progress in our careers.
The stigma about CC's have to stop and the place it needs to die is in the high schools. Many kids come out of college counseling classes at high school thinking that if they don't go to an Ivy that they're basically going to fail out of life and end up dead from a cheap drug overdose. For most people, it matters approximately zero percent in their day to day work lives. I and my old CC friends routinely work with people who went to far better and more expensive schools than I did and have found plenty of workforce success.