Okay, this is a long response to a loaded question and the best answer is: likely not but it depends, mostly on whether you choose the right college or not (please bear with me.)
From a pricing point of view, no, it's not. You don't get much out of it financially as there is an overwhelming chance you will not make money in the arts, especially fine arts (as opposed to design or illustration).
From a skills point of view, go to a small technical art school and find a mentor instead. If you do go to college you have to carefully look who's come out of that college recently. Almost all colleges are ranked by their master's programs so you have to be careful when judging as a lot of master's professors do not teach undergrad. Most of the skills you can give yourself by intense personal work, but it's helpful to have a mentor who can guide you out of the ruts you will fall into. Instead, find a mentor, and work your ass off. Read the book Mastery by Robert Greene, it will help you on this path. http://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Robert-Greene/dp/014312417X.
From the animation career, yes it's a great idea, but not at all guaranteed that you'll make it. About 1% of the people who into animation make it in the animation world. The art world is 90% politics and 10% talent, which is a big reason that the major artists you see always have a big personality. You have to have one to stand out. To that end having a pedigree to your name helps boost you. A good reputation school for undergrad will give you an in to a good reputation school for the graduate level, which will give you a good rep for getting noticed. Nothing here is guaranteed and you'll be mingling as much as you make art. Also, this will probably require you to move to NYC or LA (not sure where you live).
When in art school expect to make art 50 to 60 hours a week. Having a full time job is practically out of the question. Learn to be a starving artist now, and learn to have an amazing work ethic and dedication.
Make sure you go to a school that matches your personality and goals. You will spend much of your time being frustrated and unfulfilled if you go to a school that isn't on your same wavelength in terms of what you want to achieve and where you want to go with your career.
Learn to mingle and learn to be extroverted. This doesn't mean change your core, but your social and business skills are paramount, even more important than your technical and creative skills.
As an aspiring animator who’s getting their footing in webcomics, I’ll be brutally honest, I’d say roughly 10% of all total animation grads end up in the industry, or in adjacent industries.
Universities inflate their numbers. Look at their website closely and you see that they count any employed graduate of their program in their numbers. That could mean “jackie is a board artist at Disney” and “Mark works at Subway down the road” are both included in the 10% of graduates with jobs. It’s scary to know that most animation graduates work in restaurants or have other wildly different careers. It's not to say you can't have success, but art school is perhaps the most expensive path to success. Do a lot of research before you go to any school, from current professors who will be teaching your courses, to their philosophy, to even sitting into their classes to see if it's the sort of thing you want to do. It's a serious dedication, and unlike other majors; about the only majors that require so much effort are hard sciences, pre-med and pre-law, but without the payback that those careers will give you. On the other hand, they go to school for much longer in post grad, where postgrad doesn't exist for artists in the US (I hear doctorates are available in Europe).
