I was a self-taught dev for nearly a decade. Then I got the opportunity to go back for the CS degree. Probably the biggest thing that I got out of it was that I

I was a self-taught dev for nearly a decade. Then I got the opportunity to go back for the CS degree. Probably the biggest thing that I got out of it was that I had to work on some things I almost never would have done myself (for me, my low level C/Linux code and networking classes), and it expanded my overall understanding of computers a bit. You can do that yourself, but you have to do it yourself. :)