These schools are capitalizing on the growth of the industry and the demand to be a part of it but the number of weak and unprepared candidates my studio is seeing coming from many of these schools is staggering. Not all candidates are bad and some schools are better than others for certain but it frustrates me to see so many people investing $60k, $80k, or even $100k+ for an education and they can't compete with someone who worked a minimum wage QA job for the same number of years and gained more relevant experience and skills to move to a permanent position. I just don't see these schools being held accountable for the quality of their education in this field.

why go to college when you can learn for free? (as far game dev is concerned)
do game companies even care if you went to college?

College is a helpful motivation device for people who tend to be easily distracted & need deadlines imposed by another person in order to achieve anything.

I looked at enrolling on one of these courses when I started at uni. I opted instead for a vanilla CS degree for a few reasons:

1) If I cannot break into the games industry straight out of uni, it's more likely to get me employment with other tech companies.
2) Stronger foundation in engineering mathematics (vectors, 3dmath etc) which a lot of employers were looking for)
3) I enjoy coding anyway, so I'd be doing the game dev stuff in my free time anyways.

I was pretty disapointed though that my uni axed all the modules I wanted to take after I had been there for a year, but I'm still pleased with how things are going so far.

I went to Devry university myself not a bad school in its own right while their were some weaknesses in the curriculum I honestly feel like the bigger issue with game development education is the transition from a gamer student to a profesional developer. One of the most important ( free) lessons a professor taught me was that in order to be a good game developer , no matter what your discipline, you have to learn and apply yourself outside of class. nearly every developer I know who managed to get a job in development after graduation took this advice , the others for the most part did not.

There are DEFINITELY a lot of schools out there who are selling a weak education and leaving unprepared students in their wake but I also feel like many of my classmates weren't fully committed to development either. They loved videogames but that's not enough to make it in this industry .

I definitely hope more developers start to reach out to the schools though , to my school game developers seemed to be a mysterious and mythical collection of individuals and all the information they had on game development was the product of observing them when they rarely poked their heads out . Had I as a student and my other classmates had the opportunity to talk to and observe a developer ourselves it would have made a world of difference in my personal opinion.

As a student potentially looking at a school I would ask to see previous grad's exit portfolios. Let the students work speak for the program.

I enrolled in a standard CS program and took the two courses offered in game development ( they only ran those classes once :( ). Personally the best advice I can give anyone interested in game development is practice, nothing teaches you more then experience.