Some great advice here Charlie. I have taken the harder of learning by my own mistakes, but I am not doing photography professionally, so mistakes are my own problem.
I see it very similar to writing and learning to write. I had been writing for many years and after doing some travel decided to peruse a course in travel journalism (thankfully a college level course and only $1000 out of pocket). The problem I found was that this course taught me how to write to fit into the mould of journalism. It did not teach me to write any better than I was already writing, it was just going to teach me to change my voice to fit into a box.