I just learned Better Learning 5 (BL5), and it doesn't seem to have been even close to worth it. I posted full details of this experience in http://beta.glitch.com/forum/general/1973/, but figured that the topic of ideas for how to improve this skill tree should be placed here instead of the general forum thread. There were lots of other people in the general forum who also posted results showing that the Better Learning skill tree is not producing results that are worth the effort.
My experience of the times it would take to learn Mining III:
Knowing BL3 and 67 skills total: 1 d, 0 h, 27 m, 32 s
Knowing BL4 and 68 skills total: 22 h, 3 m, 9 s
Knowing BL5 and 70 skills total: 1 d, 2 h, 1 m, 11 s
Whoa! Something's totally wrong here! My time to learn Mining III increased by 1.5 hours over what it would have been if I never learned BL4 or BL5 (plus one other measly extra skill).
It seems to me that this is either a bug, or the better learning skills are counting towards a hefty penalty for learning more skills, in such a way that their beneficial effects can be more than canceled out.
Here are my ideas on how to improve this:
Either raise the threshold for the "too many skill" penalty to something higher than 32? for BL5 (that many skills is nothing in this huge skill tree that will only be getting bigger), or allow for reduced penalty for higher numbers of skill learned: Example: If you know BL5, you get no penalty at less than 32 skills learned. At less than 40, you get 10% penalty. At less than 50, you get 20% penalty, etc., etc.
Also: DON"T make the BL skills count towards the "too many skill" penalty! That makes learning them totally counter-productive.