We literally have Ph.D's here who dont know how to use a Linux CLI... I'm baffled as to how you get into the security industry without understanding actual security. The only thing your Ph.D. counts for is understanding the rules that allow you to ball-bust people into paying your salary.

Theory and practice can be quite different sometimes

In my college there's people in 3rd level who have gone through many coding subjects (Algorithms and Data Structures (Pascal), Programming Paradigms (Smalltalk), Semantics and Syntax of Programming Languages (C)) and don't know how to code. They literally can't solve simple problems, they don't even know where to start coding a hypothetical answer to them.
Happens everywhere bud.

Litterally the reason I am dropping uni

If they want to hire me they will look at my working experience. If they need the degree to hire me, I'm not interested into join them in the first place.

Phd is a doctor of philosophy. I'm sure they can talk about the philosophy of IT security for hours.

@molaram It's a bit more complicated than this.

IT workers are the new low-cost skilled workers in the business industry.

Today all companies need websites, applications and more to be competitive in the market. This makes demand high but at the same time the narrative that "anyone can program software" driven by large companies has made the industrial workers' pool full of low-quality people with surface expertise.

Just think of YouTube, full of Indians with their 5-minute tutorials for each tech stack.

Now, without going into detail unnecessarily, large companies have lowered entry barriers so that anyone can jump on the software development wagon.

What do you expect from companies?

They are known to be looking for people who are able to do the job without worrying too much about quality.

The same applies to consulting firms. They don't give a shit about quality, just the result.

Is the customer happy?
Good
Is it best practice?
No
Is the customer happy?
Good

@molaram At the same time, the average wage has fallen as a result of this pool of workers.

Universities, on the other hand, are not able to keep up. I've been programming computers since I was 14. I found vulnerabilities inside Windows, still enjoy breaking things and fixing them. I contribute to open source.

But that's NOT enough to afford a decent salary.

Graduation is quite useless in such a market. "Yes, congratulations, you can calculate the computational complexity of a certain algorithm... but now go back to writing shit code, we're late on the road map."

Also, how many companies ask you to develop super-efficient algorithms?

The point is that many companies do not even understand these technical aspects.

What are you surprised about?

We live in a depressing reality.

The moment IT stopped being a closed industry, all this mess started.

@molaram You are greatly missing the point.

It's not about the degree, it's about the labour market.