Only other option was the military, but my eyesight was too poor to even enlist in the Army (and this during the Carter nadir of the military).
While this history can certainly be interesting, you're anecdotes aren't all that helpful for people looking for options now such as the person who wrote the blog post.
By then, the cost of going to a top school was beyond what almost anyone could do to work through it (MIT used to be known as a place where working class parents could send their children to to become engineers, and they'd work on the side to put themselves through it; didn't Feynman do this in part?), and since academic inflation has been a lot greater than CPI inflation, it's only gotten worse. E.g. not too long after I started in the fall of 1979, as I understand it MIT's costs doubled in the space of a few years (no doubt due to Carter inflation plus MIT's horrible financial management which I detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6178931).
MIT still has the same needs based only financial aid system. Others have confirmed that if you don't need it as judged by FAFSA/College Board CSS PROFILE---which my parent would have refused to fill out anyway---you will get insufficient or no loans if your parents don't cooperate/co-sign.
The military eyesight situation has improved due to new procedures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_surgery ; the radial keratotomy available then was right out), although I don't know if my astigmatism would be a disqualifier now, or if it could be arranged or maybe afforded by me as my eyesight was back then.
Bottom line: if the military is not an option, the kids of uncooperative rich parents are still seriously screwed, and for the same reasons.
Case in point: in high school I lined up thousands of dollars in financial aid that no one else bothered to apply to. The largest check being $4,000 from my Alumni association for writing two paragraphs about how much I liked my school. A white friend of mine even got a NAACP scholarship because no one else applied (In case you don't believe this happens or think I'm joking, see [1] (not my friend). No one seemed to mind in his case).
I had some family issues and then had a falling out with my family and was locked out of FAFSA until I turned 23. Now THAT is something that does made you ineligible for pretty much any financial aid aside from traditional loans and working a lot. That really sucked. I ended up having not finishing my bachelors as a result. Thankfully Community College worked out pretty well for me.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/12/jeffrey-warren-whit...