An aviation school is what you make of it. You might consider it a "waste of time" (or money or effort or whatever). Personally, I consider it a huge asset to my career. Maybe not because I learned to fly at such a school, but because of the networking.

Everywhere I travel I run into people I know from college. Not only that, I chose to stay connected to UND after graduation. As a result, I personally know several very influential people in aviation. Including execs and managment at many well known aviation companies that are also UND alumni.

Do you have to go to an aviation school or university to learn to fly? Of course not. Will doing so provide you a few opportunites that you might not get with the FBO route, almost definitely. Is there a right way or a wrong way? Nope.

Either way works and at the end of the day, we all have the same licenses and certificates.