You have some learning to do if setting up a private vpn doesn’t work.
There is a possibility to use extra space in ping packets for vpn connections. I would be very suprised if ping was blocked too
If you google around there’s a few free tier cloud instances, install Ubuntu server and setup WireGuard. There’s a dead it’s easy wg-easy package for docker, and with some tweaks you’ll be up and running in no time. Update it occasionally, and maybe even do some other things with it. At the end of the day, you can always say it’s for labs or for practice, and that’s why there’s so much traffic going to it. You’re learning, what are they gonna do. You could also put this at a parents or friends house, doesn’t matter as long as your port forward the correct things and configure it correctly.
I would recommend hosting your own vpn like u/scripcat said but if you don’t want to go through the hassle try ProtonVPN it has a stealth protocol that desires it self as regular network traffic it also has alliterative routing with routs vpn traffic through AWS so your uni can’t block it
AWS offers a Virtual Machine in their free tier you can use to create a VPN, It’s pretty easy you can use the OpenVPN template from the Marketplace, there is a vid from the Channel “NetworkChuck” that explains it very well, just search NetworkChuck AWS VPN and it should pop up
Like others have said, most likely the only access to the Internet goes through a proxy server so vpn’s etc simply will not work, your best bet is a cloud service server or setting up an at home portal you can access via https
VPN, a DNS change wouldn’t fix anything.
What is most likely happening is the university is blocking every bit of traffic that doesnt go through their dns servers. This essentially eliminates every possible escape vector you can think of. Best bet is cellular. I say from experience since my college does it and my networking instructor explained the colleges setup to us
The Chinese use this to get over the great firewall. If it works for them it’s probably gonna work for you: