Benefits of Formal UI/UX Training
Any incremental knowledge in this area is to your advantage. To decide whether this is right for them, other developers should take one or more classes as you have. Ultimately, you should find a niche that is something you like to do, something you are good at doing, and something people will pay you (hopefully a lot) to do.
Degrees in UI / UX probably mean a great deal if they are from a places like Stanford Design School or MIT Media Lab. I had a professor, Dr. Win Burleson who did his masters and PhD at those two institutions respectively. I am not sure if it brought him fortune, but I think it brought him some degree of fame, and I was certainly impressed. Having said that, a good student is a good student where ever they study and it sounds like you must have made at least one academic contact who you like for classes.
There are many great specialists and conferences in this field. Bill Buxton is interesting because of the diversity of his work, and has a great book Sketching User Experiences (with links to 25+ videos if you don't really like to read), and has a great gig at Microsoft research where he can probably pursue whatever he wants.
CHI Can Be Cutting Edge and a Creative Outlet
Many of the things that we will see in computing will have CHI (Computer Human Interfaces) professionals leading the way. When I took my CHI class, there were people doing wild stuff like using Emotive BHI (Brain Computer Interface) (as seen on TED) devices to steer through a maze, computer vision hooked in with a helmet with a haptic interface that could guide a blind person through a maze with vibration and sound, several groups with mobile apps, and a group or two that used robots. We each took Independent Review Board training so that we would know the techniques and precautions for doing safe and ethical research on human subjects. Doing Web and App interfaces may have plentiful opportunities, but you could also go another way by thinking outside the box.
Potentially Profitable Niche
Apple products demand a premium because they pay attention to CHI details and have pioneered NUIs (natural user interfaces) and very frequently adopted technologies and design from many places. I suspect the Donald Norman, who was a true expert in CHI and part of Apple's leadership for a while made high value contributions. If you could sell similar skills to a company as an employee, to many companies as a free lance or studio based professional, or as a maker of apps and web properties that drive revenue from end users, you can benefit a lot by this training.
If you are Motivated, Say Yes To More Schooling
In the future, it will be critical to retrain every few years. You could go back to school another year just to do your CHI training. Alternatively, you could work in industry while taking a second degree part time. If you have a big goal in mind, you could road map it against the curricula from the academic program you are considering.
At school, you could network and build relationships that could turn into a team for a consultancy or business down the road. You could ally yourself with like-minded designers and graphic artists who tend to be pretty cool people. By stretching out a degree a class a semester, you would be learning something new, and while at work, you could be making something new. Access to professors, school resources and networking, and perhaps a ready made research group that is driven to propose and win research grants could be great experience.
