My take on this one is that if you've got a lot of spare money and you want to get into this, it's just all about satisfaction and getting the certificate unless you want to apply for jobs related to Bitcoin and related to blockchain technology.
Being certified by any recognized institution is only a proof that you've undergone through their path while learning but the real experience needed is the application of what you've learnt into practical use, as long as you can perform upto expectation and deliver the best needed of you, certification works for you and the other prospect you may have with working with other organizations as part of their requirements, but if for yourself, you may not need that except you want to learn while having their certificate along as an added advantage.
But if you're for the knowledge, the forum is more than enough for what you can learn from there and it's for free and that's why we're all grateful that we're part of this great community. Probably most of those people that are behind these orgs have been here as well.
You're right, some of them may actually be here unknowingly to us, but what we needed is to ensure we have what is required to be informed about bitcoin and understand how the whole network operates for our own benefits, many never know the advantage this forum offers them until they go outside the forum to pay for same thing the learn freely from bitcointalk.