I've played hackthebox intensely for one month. A lot of fun, but it takes a lot of time to crack your first insane box. If people want university level courses in this, I recommend them to study at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and take courses with the VUSEC group. The VUSEC group gave me the skills to immediately attempt an insane box and hack it (it did take a good 80 hours though :P).

Also, if there's any pentesting/reverse engineering company reading this I'm interested in doing an attacking related position. My skills are a bit rusty as a hacker (currently working as a software engineer), but then again I did hack an insane box while having rusty skills. So it might be worth something?

My email is in my profile.