I believe every people attend University with their personal reasons. such as get some knowledge, expand  their horizon, prepare for their career, or maybe to make some friends, or to meet their soulmate. From my point of view, If you attend the college or university, at least you'll get the changes belonging.
first, obviously, accumulate some knowledge is the most important thing.  Personally speaking, after four years universal life, I have learned how to use a lot of software, which helped me to not only present my design object, but also to create design idea. Such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Rhino, 3D max, Maya and so on. This useful staff really helped me to be more creative, and they do make my designing presentation dramatic. Based on these ability, I got my job here, to be an sneaker designer. As I dreamed when i was a juvenile.
Second， my horizon was significantly expanded during the universal life. In the University, there were a lot of opportunity to do the team work with different person, who has different background, with different thought. When we brainstorming together, It was the best experience that i ever had. Every body gave out their specific think on deal with the same issue. and every body could get even more idea than they can ever expected. Through the whole period, we can no only get a great sollution for projcet, but also eran a bunch of friend. and I learned how think from different perspective.
After for years, I was well prepared to be a good designer. I graduated with creative thinking, ability to refine my design think, and even rende it into a grace pictures. I've learned how to get along with different people, engineer, product manager, or the other designers. so I believe, enter colledge is a preety good way to prepare for my career. Both mind and skill. 
And I do think attend Universtity isn't the only way to get those benifit above. but we can't ignor that this is an extrondnary efficient and intersting way to do so.