What your own experience does transfer

Almost everything that is not the mechanics. How work actually gets done. What it takes to keep going at something hard for years. How to read a person's motives. How to handle money when there is not much of it. What a real commitment looks like as against a stated one.

Parents in this position often go quiet, on the reasonable ground that they do not know the system. It is the wrong conclusion drawn from a true fact. Get the mechanics from the institution, and keep offering the rest — because that is the part nobody at the university can give your child.