While I was in school I worked at a smallish-but-growing startup in tech support. I used what I was learning in school to write a couple apps that made our department's work a little easier...this was as good as any internship as when I was going through my first [dev] job search most interviewers were far more interested in discussing that than anything I did in school.
> condensing four years of C.S. courses into two
That depends on your situation...I was fortunate to have enough credits transfer that I was able to knock out the remaining in ~2 years
> as this would cost like $20,000 in tuition alone
I'm still a very junior engineer (~3 years) and make more than triple what I averaged in my previous career - I wouldn't worry too much about $20K. If you're really worried about money you may want to look at WGU[1] (where I went) which is pretty cost-effective.
