Vitek,
If your interest is a large jet/major airline and would consider anything less as a failure, than by all means get the degree first. If its going to take a lot of time (assuming you have no college credit) than if you can afford to go to school and fly at the same time, do so, but don't get started until your within 2 years or so of graduation. Best to get a degree in something unrelated to aviation, IT would be best, if that is what you've been doing up till now.
If you can see your self happy with a regional job or another non "big airline" flying job, you may fore go the degree but networking will be your major opportunity to find the good jobs. Look at the pay scales on this forum. When hourly rates are published, multiply by 1000 for the top end of what you could make in a year, maybe X 850 for a more conservative estimate.
Figure 5 years as a regional FO, than captain rates after that. While this looks widely optimistic over the past couple of years, I think going into the future it will be reasonable if not pessimistic. Good luck.