Speaking from my networking background, I did a degree in Computer Networks and Security, while I think this helped propel my educational background and skills to get certified after, I don't think it is essential.

I would however say certifications are key as well as experience and let me tell you, nothing no matter how much you lab will prepare you for the first time you walk into a datacentre environment!

Also thinking back to my CCNA/P Studies and the depth of routing protocols portrayed your unlikely to even remotely touch any of this unless A) you work for a ISP or B) A global enterprise. Heck most companies I have worked for just utilize a L3 switching core with a bunch of VLANs with 1 or 2 static routes out.

Do agree with SD-WAN, this is becoming more prevalent and the likes of Fortinet and their FortiGate Firewalls, they implement it well and you see it as a marketing buzzword everywhere! Customers seem to be taking up a lot of cloud options to name a few - Cisco Merkai, Aruba InstantON/central and Ubiquiti. Its also becoming alot more common to shift these devices to virtual compute in Azure/AWS. so knowing how to use these cloud platforms is also becoming essential.

Quick touch on Automation, I personally don't do this a lot as I'm installing/base configuring most of the time rather then supporting an environment day by day.

Despite all of this I still think the basic knowledge and foundations are not going to go away. There is still a base requirement for example to know what a VLAN is, how to create/delete assign ports etc oh, and trouble shoot spanning-tree for older networks with lack of design thought :D.

Hope this helps any new Network Engineers But cool article!