I'm sorry. My experience is that my MSSE made me look at software development in a different way and definitely gave me a much wider view of what was in front of me. Then again, my only out of pocket cost was parking, since my employer reimbursed everything except that.

Stuff like Project Management, Quality Control and even formal real-time system analysis are probably not concepts I would have learned on my own. Coming from an EE background, it definitely gave me a leg up. Not to mention the class discussions with people from widely varying software niches give really useful perspectives from outside your own little bubble.