Oauth2, JWT's, hashes, timestamps, validations, and such, are all totally simple until they're not. The black hats have way more experience and way more time invested in this space than most any normal dev.
Rhetorical questions of course as we all know it's a clickbait title, but perhaps it would be nice for this label to stop being thrown around like it has any real consistent meaning or significance?
That being said, I didn't go to some fancy university -- just a small unheard-of state school of no notoriety. I think I benefited more from the learning environment and structure than from the actual instruction I received. Maybe I would have had better feeling about my degree had I attended a prestigious university, but honestly, most of what I learned was quite surface-level knowledge that came straight from the textbooks anyway.
I feel no superiority over those without a degree. In fact, quite the opposite. I feel a bit of shame that I do not know as much as I probably should despite having a degree.
Fundamentally, I agree with you. A piece of paper doesn't mean much. Based on the interview questions that are commonly asked, it seems like our industry doesn't find degrees that meaningful either.