Getting fundamentals to work with most problems related to CS? I'm sure average hacker: * can design complex algorithms and prove them, knows most of algorithmics space * has enough algebra and statistics knowledge to develop/understand e.g. ML methods * can write computational software without numerical methods knowledge * has broad understanding of programming langs and computational concepts * can easily read more mathy books related to CS, has no truble with following whitepapers

So I would say solid math base is what you get at university that allows to work at more challenging/interesting projects.

Unfortunatelly most unis exept top ones are waste of time at least in my country.