Continous Learning is ever important

That you are not using your course of study in whatever you are doing after graduation doesn't make it useless. Also, the fact that you did not study to the extent of learning about applications of something or work where you will apply it does not make it useless.

While higher education and science education may need to get better in teaching from application point of view, it does not make whatever theory that is being taught useless. The foundation of all application is deeply rooted in theory.

The reason you are in some cars and you enter some bumps or gallops and will not feel it is because of the suspension system which has been designed with some spring constant and dynamics that absorbs and reacts to the shock. This is deeply rooted in physics and calculus for instance. An engineer that designs such a system cannot do without calculus and will not say calculus is not important or useless.

LLMs like ChatGPT that are now common these days are designed by machine learning engineers/NLP Engineers. The foundations of thier work is deeply rooted in linear algebra and calculus. There are people working in investment banking and as finance analysts and economists that write calculus before taking actions on economic decisions. Things you do in the common excel are running some of these equations in background.

But all those aside, one of the most important skill of the 21st century people need to have is ability to learn new things and you must be able to do that a fast rate. Things change so fast and people in my generation will experience more generational gap due to technology than our parents experienced with mobile devices for instance while we were growing up.

Ability to think critically, learn new things and work with people of diverse background are important skills beyond what you study in school. These are skills that tertiary education should have also equipped one with one way or the other. Most people will still learn on the job and grow in whatever choosen profession eventually.

These does not apply to professional work or white collar jobs alone. Even in artisanship. Fashion designers now use automated and industrial electric machines not common many years back. vehicles are now hybrid powered and are coming with new technologies, the mechanic will need to learn how to work on these kind of systems and solve maintenance problems and repair.

I remember asking a guy that works as a mechanic how he learnt. He mentioned he uses YouTube to learn most of the things he learnt. He grew up with uncles that were mechanic though. He also mentioned the job requires being attentive and paying attention to details. If you want to replace the brake pads of a particular car, you need to take a snapshot of how it was before removing the old one and carefully replace in the same way. He does not need to have done it in the past before.

These were his words. He went further to explain to me that you need to always recall the how of a particular engine you have worked on before as it may take another year to fix similar car.

The earlier we embrace being flexible to learning new things and learning very fast as time changes, the better. Don't blame your university education, you are probably the one that needs to rise to the challenge. University education globally will continue to teach the fundamental principles in sciences and engineering which are crittical to designing new systems.