Do degrees still matter? Nikesh Arora tells Nikhil Kamath why school is more than a CV line

Do degrees still matter in a world of 23-year-old unicorn founders? That’s the question Nikhil Kamath posed to Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora—and the answer was far more nuanced than a simple yes or no.

For Arora, education mattered less for the qualifications and more for the friction: “It teaches you how to live with people you can’t walk away from.”

The conversation, part of a wider discussion on risk, innovation, and learning, saw Kamath question whether spending eight to ten years on traditional education still makes sense. Arora—who holds degrees from IIT, Northeastern, and Boston College, plus a CFA—wasn’t entirely convinced he’d do it the same way again. “Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “At that time, it was the benchmark.”

Arora’s academic journey was far from straightforward. He skipped out midway through India’s IIM entrance exam to watch a movie, later moving to the U.S., where he juggled work and study, even teaching computer science after self-learning it in a summer. “It was easier to study and work at the same time in the U.S.,” he said, contrasting it with India’s education pressures.

Still, Arora argued the real return on education wasn’t what went on a résumé. “Education is as much a social experience as a learning experience,” he told Kamath. It teaches competition, conflict management, and resilience—skills that don’t show up in a syllabus but shape leadership and adaptability.

Kamath challenged that premise: would a diverse, unstructured setting—like a public park—teach more than elite institutions filled with similar people? Arora agreed, to a point. “At the park, you don’t like someone, you just leave. At school, you’re stuck with them for two years. You learn to manage, and that’s what builds you.”

Even as both men acknowledged the shifting value of degrees in today’s high-speed startup economy, Arora stood by one thing: for the 99.9% of people who aren’t prodigies, structured learning and social friction still shape the fundamentals.