College for web design/devlopment? need options

[cluongo]

I am in a bit of pickle and sort of lost.

I want to do web design/development as a career. I'm at a 2 year technical college in Atlanta, GA getting a CIS: Web Design associates.

I have a GOOD bit of knowledge going into this program and I mean over 5+ years of self taught experience. These classes im taking seem like they're not really propelling me forward. In my "HTML" class they are teaching us how to use tables....I mean really?

I want to be a do it all kind of guy...from the design in PHotoshop of a layout, to the slicing and coding into html/css, to the scripting Javascript/PHP, to the database management you name it.

I just feel like im wasting my time at this college and im not going to learn anything new or that will benefit me. The teachers barely seem to know what they are talking about.

My general question is what KIND of college would be my best bet. I know what I want to do, as listed above, and just want to learn that and get a job. So is an associates the best path? Or a 4 year degree?

I looked into a 4 year computer science degree, but they dont really emphasize on Web Design/Development from what Ive read.

Here is the BIG questions:
+What kind of degree should I aim for to do Web Design/Development
+What kind of college should I go to
+Whats a GREAT college in the United States that is ahead of the curve and great at teaching (please no Full Sail, for profit junk schools)

thanks guys

[johnnyjims]

I'm in the same situation right now. Well, sort of. I'm looking for a school to go to for web design and development as well. I actually happen to have a job in web design/dev. and currently work full time managing it (I lucked out and got the job because of my experience and no degree), so I'm trying to figure out the best option for school while I work. I'll probably have to do some kind of online program, but I don't want to do the Full Sail thing either (I heard that people who go to Full Sail struggle to get jobs).

There are some schools that offer programs specifically in web design and development. I am looking into the International Academy of Design and Technology(iadt.edu (http://www.iadt.edu/)), which seems to be an accredited US school. I'm not completely sure about it and have no idea what their program is like, but they do offer an online bachelor's degree in web design and development.

Of the designers/developers that I have met, it seems that most of them have at least a bachelor's degree, but it may not be necessary if you have the experience and the right opportunity comes your way. It sure helps, though.

What I can say is that you're definitely going in the right direction wanting to be able to do it all. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have designers that only know how to do one thing. In the past, we've had one designer make the psd, another slice and code, and a separate developer code javascript because the other designers don't know how. It is a huge pain to have to send files back and forth between everyone and hope you have the most recent version when you show it to a client. You'll do really well if you can do everything.

Hopefully this helps.