Counterpoint: I worked as a developer before I had my masters, and a lot of what I learned in University, often things I would not really have thought to go deeply into them myself, opened up new worlds to this day.

I considered myself "technically competent" before and thought I could learn everything where it comes up, but past a certain level there are aspects to development that just are just really hard to absorb if you don't have the (hard, gritty) theoretical and mathematical foundation.