Actually very true...I was self-teaching myself to model and animate for a good 2 years prior to even taking classes so I have about 5 years of experience in all, decided to hit the program for it, for both extra practice, and to learn some programming. The big problem is, while these classes are engineered to teach new people, a lot of the people I see come in, have 0 experience prior, and hell a lot of them seem to have little computer experience in general <.< which for this field, is just sad. But I also am not strictly relying on this degree for getting a job either, after I finish I will be doing Web Design at a 4-year school and be taking a brief animation course there, that will earn me an additional certificate. My recent trip to Durham, NC last month gave me a chance to meet with good portion of the development team from Insomniac, specifically the ones making Ratchet and Clank : Full Frontal Assault. Among some of the things I learned from speaking with them (getting to see their animation and even overall design pipelines, as well as some of their character rigs) was that, in all reality, while YES a degree in things like animation will help designers, that they personally would be far happier just seeing someone with another degree, but who has a fantastic portfolio of things they made from self-teaching. But the thing is, game design is really like any other field out there (cept for like, medicine), where you do not absolutely need THAT degree to get in the field, if you can show that you know what you are doing. However at the same time, unless they just happen to stumble upon you online, they are not going to even consider someone who doesn't have at least SOME kind of college degree.