Recently, I spent 3 months as a maintainer of about a dozen production Drupal websites.

That job was, by far, the worst job I've ever had in 11 years as a PHP programmer.

Drupal is a horrible, terribly programmed piece of shit that makes life extraordinarily difficult for everything from install to administration to development to deployment. It is BEYOND bloated, dogged slow, kludgy, broken, insecure, half-baked, lacking in good community support, and generally awful through and through. It is an ugly bitch to code in on multiple levels--massive byzantine array structures to do anything, slow variable functions, the object orientation it has is pointless, obnoxious database schema and proprietary SQL (yes, really), the Javascript Drupal object...

I could go into further detail...I came up with 39 reasons as part of my regular venting in that job why I will NEVER touch it again or so much as own up to having used it in the past.

Trust me, do NOT deal with that crap. Even worse than using it would be to throw that white elephant on a third party (the municipality) that has no concept of how to deal with it, and would very likely have to pay out the ass for the rare PHP programmer that specializes in Drupal to deal with it when you've moved on.

The first page of this new york times article basically answers your question.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html

Having just gone through an exhausting whirlwind of a job hunt in the bay area, I would say, yes, absolutely, a degree in CS is worthwhile. I was eliminated from consideration for a good number of positions because I did not have a CS degree and I was asked about having one in many phone screens and interviews. The act of being able to do pen-and-paper/whiteboard programming tests (something you'll get a lot of in CS classes) and talk about what I'm doing with some level of competence was key to my successful prospects. That, and working with people in paired programming sessions/being a nice guy helped too, something you'll probably get experience with in CS classes as well.

In the very-much-non-tech-town I am from, Phoenix, I was asked about having a degree once. This may be one of those things that varies on your area, but for areas that matter (here, probably a few select cities elsewhere) it would be advantageous to have one.

And if you think there aren't companies that feel the need to train you, that's ridiculous. I took what is all intents and purposes an entry level Ruby on Rails job after over a decade in PHP and some past (mostly 3 or 4 years ago) RoR experience. There are good companies that will hire good programmers regardless of what languages they know--I know this because I am working for one now. You do have to find them tho.