It depends on a lot of factors. If you're in a country where tuition is free, then it's more worthwhile than if you're in one where tuition costs 5 years worth of salary...

If you want to learn to be a programmer or artist, I would recommend a degree focused specifically on those professions (computer sciences, software engineering, fine arts, etc). 

If you want to be a game designer, then maybe a game school is a decent choice, as there isn't a well agreed upon educational framework for that profession (yet), so game schools are the closest thing. Alternatively, you could get a tertiary degree in anything else too - English literature, Philosophical Theology, Psychology, Electrical engineering, Teaching, etc (if education is a luxury you can afford). The point of a degree, aside from starting a career is to create more well rounded adults, and people with lots of life experience tend to be good designers in every field of design (IMHO).

For what its worth though, game specific courses can be a bit predatory. Hopefully it's different in the rest of the world, but here in Australia, the local game schools produce an equal number of graduates per year to the number of people currently employed in the local industry... The local industry certainly isn't at a 100% growth rate -- so if we guessed 3% growth, then 97% of graduates have no hope of finding an employer... It's even worse than that when your realize that they are also competing against the people who did specialised art/code degrees, and people who didn't do a degree at all. To make that picture even worse, pure "design" jobs probably account for well under 5% of all game industry jobs, so the competition to secure an actual "game designer" job is fierce. 

In that light, I would certainly recommend having a portfolio that proves you're worthy of such a rare career. Maybe that means skipping school to toil at a basement desk. Maybe it means doing a degree and spending nights and weekends on hobby projects. Maybe it means packing a tablet PC into a backpack and hiking across Europe... 

5 hours ago, HomeBrewArcana said:

whether it's worth going to school for game design/coding etc.

There's a world of difference between the two sides of your slash there.  Which is it you're really asking about? Are you asking about design? Or are you asking about programming instead? The advice differs widely, depending on which you're asking about.

1 hour ago, HomeBrewArcana said:

Any recommendations of good books?

Bunches of'em. Definitely have a look at Tracy Fullerton's book and Raph Koster's book (neither of which is about "coding" but rather about design).

I really like Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.

I'm not suggesting this as a replacement for a book (which, if chosen well will be much better rounded and complete) but online you'll find some great reading at Daniel Cook's Lost Garden.  Click on "essays" at the top and try the tags for "worth reading" and "science of game design" for some good starting points.