Generally, work experience is worth more than schooling in the pastry world, though that depends somewhat on the quality of the work experience. If you’ve been stuck cranking out the same 8 pastries every day for the past 4 years, then you will have acquired a good sense of what production work is like, but you’ll have a very limited repertoire and a narrow technical base.
The ideal would be to work for a chef who has a broad experience himself, exposes his employees to a wide range of products and techniques, and has good teaching skills. The fact is, there aren’t a lot of guys like this out there. The retail pastry field in the US is not in good shape.
I currently teach in a large culinary school here in Chicago. My observation is that the pastry students are shown a wide range of techniques, but get little of the repetition that’s necessary to really develop those skills. They also don’t get a real feel for what a true production environment is like. It’s one thing to make a cake or two in a pristine, well-equiped school kitchen, but quite another to crank out 75 or more pastries of several varieties at 5:00AM with beat-up shop equipment while the chef screams at you. And the better schools cost insane amounts of money.