I rarely speak in absolutes, so please understand that I mean this respectfully.
You are wrong. This isn’t a “everyone decides that for themself” sorta thing. 17% of salary is an absolutely huge number - enough to make it economically impossible to survive as an individual (let alone a family) if your salary is low enough. Consider if your salary is $50k/year (a not un-heard-of, but low, salary for a Junior UXer in my area). Between taxes and a 17% salary forfeiture, you’d be making around $30k/year. If you have any family at all, it’s not going to be easy to stay afloat on that wage.
There’s another whole conversation to be had here as well - increasingly, employers are ignoring the education of applicants who have gone through these types of training courses, preferring only to recognize education from accredited, 4-year degree programs. Whether or not this is fair is a conversation to have, to be sure, but it’s absolutely an accurate reflection of what’s happening.
The reason why this is happening is because the quality of these types of programs is often dubious. When you buy into this type of program, you have no idea what you’re getting - and employers who are seeing a name of a course provider on a resume have no idea of the quality they represent. UX boot camps and intensive courses have increasingly become cash cows for unscrupulous operators who run them in the “University of Phoenix” for-profit diploma mill fashion.
Because of this, some employers are discarding applicants with non-accredited UX education on their resumes outright. In short, even if you go through one of these programs, it may hurt your application, not help it. You may be better off not even listing it on a resume.
So what are you really getting for $20k or 17% of your salary for two years? A certificate that may mean something to your potential interviewers - but probably won’t help you, and may even automatically disqualify you. You might be getting some practical work that you might be able to put in your portfolio, but given the quality of the education even this practical work might not be able.
Moral of the story - you are far better off spending $20k on a community college UX/UI/Design degree than you are going through one of these bootcamps. It will do more to help you get noticed, give you better experience, and give you more in the way of practical skills.