The first trip to university, my tester sim adopted the sorority's bwan speedster and wouldn't give it back! So much for worrying about scholarships.
The next trip she brought her husband along and rented one of the nicer houses. Since he's a self-employed nectar maker a diploma won't do much for him, so he only signed up for one course in the fine arts program. I'd intended on him instantly failing by skipping his classes to take care of his stressed wife, but surprisingly he didn't! By making the occasional batch of nectar using a machine brought along via family inventory his academic meter stayed around the midpoint. He didn't set foot into class once during the full two week term. As a lark I sent him in for the final final exam (he skipped the midterm) and chose the "beg teacher" tone. He wound up earning a B!
This suggests that depending on the program and the skills that add to it, sims might be able to earn their diplomas by working solely on their skills (and skipping every class). One thing that needs testing is how many courses are signed up for and how much skilling needs to be done to offset the skipping - but it seems skipping one course can very easily be done. I'm curious if anyone else has done something similar, and how it turned out.
Also, since you can build/buy everything in a residence, it seems a sim could make scads of cash by stripmining a dorm. Heck, you could probably sell off the entire house and yard, build a little efficiency apartment with a locked door, and pocket the profit. I wonder how much a repeat offender could make, systematically destroying every residence available!