I think there is no straight professional/hack answer to this for anyone gracing these halls. I think you need a mixture of professional training to get the breadth of knowledge, and hackish tendancies to be able to plumb the depths of knowledge.

In other words if you don't have the passion to learn on your own, but went to school, you're not going to be better than simply adequate, and if your a hack with no schooling, there will be concepts that you're never going to be introduced to.

Those with both the passion and schooling are going to make up the upper eschelon of any discipline. And a tiny percentage of those will turn out to be the True Wizards.

-Scott