college degree in Graphic Design. worth it?

Design is like a lot of other fields, entry level needs a killer portfolio and degree at a lot of places. Where you get that portfolio with no experience, nobody knows. I side-step in and out of design because of my lengthy resume, but a lot of these days UX design, HCI and a little knowledge of code goes a very long way for many of my clients.

 

If you are in the USA, for some of the higher level agencies and in-house work a degree is the first thing on the list of job requirements. No degree, and they won’t even bother looking at your resume, let alone your portfolio. There are people here on the GDF that have been in the design field a long time, have a ton more experience than any college grad, but because they came up the old-school learn-by-doing way, they don’t even get a consideration because they do not have that little piece of paper. That’s not saying there aren’t jobs out there. We hire with or without a degree. But we also don’t do design work. We realize other’s designs.
Think about which end of that stick you want to be on.