I don't think University works as a blanket indicator, but it definitely can help. At least at Bristol (my alma mater), the students are highly exposed to low l

I don't think University works as a blanket indicator, but it definitely can help. At least at Bristol (my alma mater), the students are highly exposed to low level technical detail, with assignments including processor design, building an assembler, and in the final year, writing a kernel for a multi-processing OS (the hardest thing I've ever tried). They have courses on algorithms, computational complexity and a good mathematics unit too. Plus they teach C, Haskell and Java in the first year to give a good spread of different paradigms, and then expect students to go out and learn any other languages as appropriate for whatever they're working on at the time. I have my own issues with my time there, but for giving a good, detailed, low-level understanding of computing, I can't fault them.