I am not done with university yet, so I don't speak confidently. But I'm afraid I have no special perspective, I just echo what I hear a lot: Learning by doing is probably the most important, but structured courses provide a theoretical and practical foundation that fills in a lot of important gaps that I would have had if I were only self taught.

That echoes my own thoughts as someone that's been out of school for a long time and worked with people with and without degrees. There's some gaps without a degree, but not usually so much that they can't be overcome with a little time and effort, and I don't think it usually matters much.

Connections from university though... I suspect that can be extremely useful, but didn't leverage that in my own time there, so can only guess as to how much (and also I didn't go to an ivy league school or anything where it could have made an even larger difference).