I have heard the theory put forward a lot that a university degree provides plausible deniability to the person who makes the decision to hire you. If you turn out to be a problem then whoever hired you can say “degree from X” and suddenly no one can blame them for making a bad choice. If you hire a 17 year old who “seems competent” then they probably are fine, but if something goes wrong the person who made the hiring decision suddenly has to defend the “they seemed competent” position in a hypothetical where everyone now knows they were not.
I have heard the theory put forward a lot that a university degree provides plausible deniability to the person who makes the decision to hire you. If you turn out to be a problem then whoever hired you can say “degree from X” and suddenly no one can blame them for making a bad choice. If you hire a 17 year old who “seems competent” then they probably are fine, but if something goes wrong the person who made the hiring decision suddenly has to defend the “they seemed competent” position in a hypothetical where everyone now knows they were not.