If you want my advice, the best thing an aspiring pilot could do is get a master's degree in some skill they could carry with them the rest of their life. Mine involves a lot of lab research (among other things). I had college buddies who went into wastewater treatment (sewage plants). Two of them eventually got into law enforcement, but every year they go to wastewater conferences and keep their certifications current. At least one of them plans to retire from law enforcement shortly and get back into water treatment. He always valued having the degree in his back pocket to fall back on. Plus having a degree helps advance in general even in his cop job. As I said in a previous post, I've used my master's when times were tough at the airlines. It hasn't always been the most lucrative, but it's better than doing unskilled labour when I was furloughed or didn't want to take a displacement or something. So, my advice is to do something like this with a degree and slowly build up flight time while doing it at a local airport. Make flight instruction your part-time job while getting the degree.
The 2nd best choice would get a bachelor's degree in anything but aviation and flight instruct part-time while doing that. My first degree was in history, which was kind of useless for a specific job, but it was something to build off of and getting a degree at a state college is far, far cheaper than going to an aviation college.
3rd best choice would be getting a 2-year degree at a technical college that teaches aviation. It would be useless for anything but 91, 135 and regional flying, but again a lot cheaper than a 4-year aviation college.
My last choice would be a 4-year aviation degree. It's useless for anything but flying and it's totally cost prohibitive. Some previous poster asked how many pilots had their educations paid for by their parents. I'm willing to bet almost 100% of the ones that went this route did. In my middle-class situation, there is no way on God's green earth myself, or my parents could afford that. And although I took on some student loan debt for college (also had the GI Bill and a part-time job) it pales in comparison to what kind of debt I would have had to take on to go to an aviation college. I'd still be paying it off! And, I guess if you have the silver spoon that could buy this plan for you then you really don't have to worry about having a degree to fall back on anyway because you have your family inheritance for that. I'm not trying to sound all Bernie Sanders, but just stating a fact that different people have different situations and different safety nets. I wouldn't go this route unless I had a HUGE family financial safety net!