Two sides to every coin...
I have been a self-taught programmer for many, many years (and I mean a lot), and to be honest I feel that I have missed out on many opportunities because of not having that degree on my CV.
I have a ton of experience in numerous languages but without the formal training my work was somewhat sloppy, but always worked as expected. I really needed some direction, so I recently decided to pay my dues and go to University, and while yes there is a lot of rubbish being taught such as "Personal & Professional Development" rubbish that you have to do (government-mandated self-reflection bullshit), there are some important programming concepts being taught.
For example, I never fully understood classes and objects until I began at university, my algorithms were virtually non-existent, and many other concepts were missing from my "skillset" (gawd I hate that word).
So, I am not at University because the money in IT is great (it isn't, but it should be), I'm there to sharpen up my programming. I highly recommend it to any budding programmer, if you love programming, a degree will give you a greater power behind the console. Just watch out for the fees these days, yikes!!