Yes, that's certainly an aspect of it. As someone with a lot of professional experience, it's easy to get into a rut with what you're required to do in your day job. I always tried to keep up with new techniques, frameworks, etc. But getting the degree forced me to learn more about the course subjects. Like in Computer Networking, most of my low-level networking knowledge was several years old. Being exposed to Software Defined Networking was very interesting, and I enjoyed experimenting with Pyretic to explore how it works.