I don't think that's really true, and if it is I don't think it's an advantage you'd actually want to use later in life. Based of my experience of hiring over the past 25 years (as someone hiring people, not as a candidate), my belief now is that your university degree is important for about a decade, has diminishing returns over the next few years, and then it's basically irrelevant. If you've got 15 years of relevant experience what degree you have and where it's from makes no difference to a good company.

The exception is somewhat antagonistic too - if you still believe it's important (e.g you come to an interview and talk about how great Cambridge is) that's a signal you're not going to be a good hire.

Obviously there are many caveats to this - I don't have an elite university degree, I'm not in the US, I've only ever hired developers, I've never worked in a business that needed people with elite university degrees, the number of people I've hired is a tiny sample of the industry, etc.

I suspect people who think elite degrees are important are mostly other people who have an elite degree, and often those people are the ones who make it into hiring manager positions or higher. In that case it kind of does matter, but only if you want to work in a company where an elite university degree counts for more than experience, and I'm pretty sure you don't.

Unless of course: “Public perceptions of higher education have declined rapidly, and I expect the problems to get worse.” turns out to be the case

(Which it probably won’t)