The Importance of Universities

Lukas Jääger - 25.09.2026

For a few years now, there have been questions in the tech world about whether a university/college degree is even necessary.

The 'older' mindset

The argument was that, with the internet and AI, anyone can just learn programming and technology on their own, and the need for lectures, boring subjects and whatever else a university might include is gone.

The counterargument was mainly university life - networking, friends, experiencing life, etc. That still stands; I'm pretty sure no one can deny that, but there's now a new important reason to consider.

AI in production and juniors

The reason why I even thought about writing this was because of The Primeagen's video titled "They can't take it anymore". The video is about the problem that has been eating away at software development - big corporations only focus on pushing code, which no one understands anymore; everything is done by AI, and developers aren't happy.

The Primeagen raises the question of how juniors are supposed to learn then. He learned from the struggles and hardships of coding, quoting: "I needed the difficult environment for me to be able to truly have to study these things." When juniors are expected to hand most of their work to AI without understanding or reviewing it, they may lose many of the struggles through which 'the skill of engineering' is developed. And that's why I think universities come back into play.

The second counterargument

Although the job opportunities for CS students might not be as prestigious as they once were, universities are now even more critical for the knowledge base they provide. When you go to a university to learn CS, they don't just teach you programming; they teach you the fundamentals of system design, project management, security, different languages and more.

You can still say, "But I can learn all that from the internet and AI," but let's be serious - when social media is giving everyone the feeling of getting left behind, AI is one click away, and nothing is really a struggle, how likely are you to actually sit down and learn all of the basics? Not saying it's impossible, but one of the key purposes of universities is to give you the environment, tools and motivation to actually and thoroughly learn.

Also, from a career perspective, in a future world full of engineers who actually don't know anything, having the degree could already raise your status and the position on the career ladder you're on. E.g.:

you who know the fundamentals and how things work | | overseeing ⌄ the AI engineers doing the basic work

TL;DR

Unis are increasingly necessary to learn the fundamentals and basics of tech in a world where no one knows anything anymore and learning by yourself is getting harder and harder.

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