I did UBI before I ever worked professionally as a mechanic--though I was a reasonably strong home mechanic (and occasional volunteer mechanic) before. If you're a career mechanic it's probably worth it--given the number of times you'll be doing every given service, even relatively small gains in efficiency or knowledge can pay off over a full time, long term career, and it's likely you'll pick up at least some knowledge and habits that are useful. The PBMA program is probably a pretty efficient way to improve your hireability without the tuition of UBI or Barnett's, and I'd love for this to be somewhat standard in the industry.

I think UBI did a reasonably good job. If I were hiring a mechanic some out of shop education would factor into hiring/pay for me--a lot of mechanics spend their time doing things slightly wrong, or without a significant breadth of knowledge. If you don't do a lot of wheel building or suspension work, I found those classes genuinely helpful. Frame building course was super fun, but had no impact on my career aside to show how much of a nerd I am. I am enrolled to do their Fox class at the next available opportunity because, for some reason, I just haven't done much Fox fork service beyond basic lowers service, in spite of doing full rebuilds on a bunch of other brands. It helps that it's an hour drive from my house.

For me personally, it definitely helped me get hired for my first job and I was told effected my starting pay.

BTW, as a career bike mechanic who's had to learn to ski tech in the last couple years--that's a bonus in a lot of scenarios.