The down side to the CCNA is that you have to re-certify every 3 years. I have a degree in IT, but I never took any CCNA exams.
I received the same certificates from my college, but as stated above they were worthless.
Anytime I went for a job interview, they never asked about any exams, just experience, and asked me job specific scenarios.
I would imagine it depends on the jobs you are applying to. A lot of the times they state they are required on job postings.
Its also worth noting that Cisco is almost like the AB of the networking world. Most people use them because they are/were the standard. As time moves on, new companies are doing just as good, if not better jobs with much cheaper priced hardware. At my current job, I am slowly replacing all the Cisco gear with Ubiquitu. I like it a lot better than the Cisco gear.