[heisenbit]

Let's be clear here: An academic is writing about project based learning. Of course concepts are important. But then according to Edison Genius and many would argue Innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

Academic success or conceptual understanding alone are not good indicators of professional success. Perseverance and collaborations are at least as important as is the ability to sell. Also let's not forget: The market is usually buying experience and not conceptual knowledge with unproven track record for application.

Projects may not be the best way to learn in depth about an isolated aspect if the project is end to end. But that is setting up a straw-man to be torched. A proper way to learn about networking e.g. would be measuring TCP performance and experimenting with the ramp-up. Or writing a protocol decoder for something non-trivial.