Should I...
1.Settle for a state/public college for Animation Schooling
Or
2. Should I attend a private/art school for a multitude of Animation classes, but be in debt forever.
[B]Does it matter what level of animation schooling I get, or as long as I get it?
Can a state/public college offer real animation training?[/B]
Does it matter what school you go to? No - what matters is the quality of work you do and what your reel looks like. If you have a fantastic reel, it won't matter whether you went to school or not. By the same token, if you come out of a great school with a mediocre reel, it won't matter that you went through the curriculum.
Can a state school offer real training? Sure, but it depends on what their curriculum is. If they're teaching you how to run software, that's not of much value. But even a small curriculum can offer good training if their coursework is on animation technique and principle, and not which buttons to push.
You'll have to do some research to figure out which kind of program the school you're interested in offers.
I personally know people from....less than stellar schools that mostly through their motivation and discipline were able to be very successful. Since their classes were taught by non-animators on stuff that had little or nothing to do with animation (except the course titles), their information was libraries and the net...the school served as a way to make sure you kept your relevant skills conditioned.
Private and expensive don't have to go hand in hand. Flagler College in St. Augustine doesn't have animation, I'm going there for fine arts and doing AnimationMentor.com for the animation classes, but it's private and the graphic design people are among the best, as an example, and tuition plus living there I think is 15 grand a year. I'm in an apartment off-campus so I only pay 5 grand a term after the state residency grant. AM doesn't need to ride side-saddle with any actual degree to be useful for an aspiring animator and that is less than 15 grand total last time I checked, and is just 18 months. They have a loan program in place but you'd have to go online or ask for specifics because it's not like some government ones that wait till you're done and break down into teeny payments.