I'm starting to believe I live in a mirror world. 
While looking job as a graphic designer (that's all I can achieve right now), a portfolio is asked very often. But the thing employers ask all the time is my degree. However, I suppose if the designs were good enough, lack of any kind of degree wouldn't mind. Personally, I know some computer scientists who had graduated only from high school, so it can also be done without higher education.
But back to the University - could you develop your art skills at the same high level without it? Would you have enough discipline to practice by yourself? Even though, as you say, there were lots of trash classes, there certainly also was some useful ones. And those additional classes - a university wants to earn a specified amount of money and I believe they'd put anything in the faculty plan to achieve this. But that's so common in every university/institute/academy/call-it-whatever-you-want I've heard of that I don't even care. All I need to do is doing useful things the best I can and all the rest just to pass.
Maybe in the USA is different, but I have never heard of a person who had graduated university with whole necessary knowledge. Even on the best ones, it's necessary to develop by your own interests and self-educate.
While looking job as a graphic designer (that's all I can achieve right now), a portfolio is asked very often. But the thing employers ask all the time is my degree. However, I suppose if the designs were good enough, lack of any kind of degree wouldn't mind. Personally, I know some computer scientists who had graduated only from high school, so it can also be done without higher education.But back to the University - could you develop your art skills at the same high level without it? Would you have enough discipline to practice by yourself? Even though, as you say, there were lots of trash classes, there certainly also was some useful ones. And those additional classes - a university wants to earn a specified amount of money and I believe they'd put anything in the faculty plan to achieve this. But that's so common in every university/institute/academy/call-it-whatever-you-want I've heard of that I don't even care. All I need to do is doing useful things the best I can and all the rest just to pass.
Maybe in the USA is different, but I have never heard of a person who had graduated university with whole necessary knowledge. Even on the best ones, it's necessary to develop by your own interests and self-educate.
The US is very different than the european areas in the fields of Illustration and design, unfortunately (fortunately?)
It is true there were some very good classes that I had. But those few classes did not equal the cost of tuition in my opinion. I feel they were worth maybe 5% of the cost of what I paid to get them. If out of all those classes I was given, only a few were worth while, I should have gone to a school that focused more tightly on just those good subjects -- which many exist out there. I would have paid substantially less for better education without any of the fat.
It is definitely true that no one graduates from college knowing everything for the career they're entering into, but when it's all said and done, you feel as though you could have gotten the same information from a book that cost $59.95 and feedback from online forums and review groups of people doing the same.
Maybe the schools in the US are really that terrible that they can be likened in such a way...
It is true there were some very good classes that I had. But those few classes did not equal the cost of tuition in my opinion. I feel they were worth maybe 5% of the cost of what I paid to get them. If out of all those classes I was given, only a few were worth while, I should have gone to a school that focused more tightly on just those good subjects -- which many exist out there. I would have paid substantially less for better education without any of the fat.
It is definitely true that no one graduates from college knowing everything for the career they're entering into, but when it's all said and done, you feel as though you could have gotten the same information from a book that cost $59.95 and feedback from online forums and review groups of people doing the same.
Maybe the schools in the US are really that terrible that they can be likened in such a way...