[atq2119]

I can back up your experience. My university studies were focused on maths and theoretical computer science, and I've learned a lot of things there that are unlikely to be learned on a regular job. That said, at least my PhD did feel a bit like an apprenticeship in how it was structured. It was an apprenticeship for becoming an academic - and while I don't work in academia anymore, that has given me some useful skills that most of my peers don't have. (Of course, there are also skills that I don't have but some of my peers do. In many teams it's useful to have a mix of academically and not academically inclined folks, and the ideal mixture obviously depends on the kind of work the team does.)