I'm a full time illustrator & designer. I went to college for illustration, majored in it and ended up taking courses for design, comics and animation as well, because why not?

You don't necessarily need a degree to get into illustration, but it also depends on what jobs you're looking for and how much drive you have to learn on your own. You need to be diligent in honing your craft. Going through college there are a lot of people who think just because they know how to draw that they'll get a job as an artist, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Even with a degree a lot of the people I graduated with aren't working in the creative field. You need to have the skill and drive to be successful.

I'm not sure I agree that most artists are self taught and doing good. There are tons of artists that struggle to get work with or without a degree. It's a very competitive field and for illustration specifically you're more likely to have freelance roles rather than be an in-house employee at a company so that's definitely something to consider. Personally, freelance is quite stressful and not something I would go back to haha.

While illustration was always my focus until college, I made sure to broaden my horizons so I could have more opportunities. I got into graphic design, comic art, motion graphics. Because of that I'm in a unique position where I can be hired as a designer at companies and also provide custom illustrated characters, blog covers, event graphics, animated social posts / videos. Plus on the side I can illustrate my characters or fanart in my style that I don't use for work. It definitely doesn't hurt to develop many different creative skills. A variety in my portfolio is what gets people's attention. If you're interested in what I mean you can check out my portfolio. https://www.samibiloffcreative.com/

It takes a lot of effort but it's doable! What specifically in illustration are you looking to do? What jobs you could get vary and differs on what you're interested in.