[matthias509]

My personal experience is that I was paid by my university to get my master's degree in the late 90's. Since I was a teaching assistant for an entry level programming class (in Java at the time). I got a tuition waiver and a stipend which was enough to cover my living expenses.

One surprising benefit was that re-learning the intro stuff well enough so I could teach it crystalized my understanding of some fundamental concepts like the difference between the stack and the heap which I kinda glossed over my first time through.

At the other end of the continuum, I was able to gain a level of skill in parallel and distributed programming and network programming much deeper than undergrad.

Was it worth it? For the price of $0 and 2 years, yes. If I was paying full price, not sure.

And do those who say the degree erodes, fundamental concepts endure. A race condition is still a race condition and a socket is still a socket even all these years later.