Question: I just witnessed an incident at my company where one of my colleagues accused another colleague and his arguments were based on the University he graduated from.

Is it correct to engage in such desperate arguments based on studies? The colleague who was judged is smart and even if he didn’t graduate from a computer science department he has a lot of knowledge in programming and 5+ years of experience in this field.

I’m asking because I also didn’t graduate a computer science university and I would like to know how to correctly react when someone brings such arguments.

Answer: 
When assessing colleagues, there are limited measures of capabilities that are as easy to measure as university education. Even so, usually it's inappropriate to mention one's university education as a point in a debate or argument while it's advisable to be respectful of someone that has earned respect (either by formal education or job experience).

Some people need to fall back on past accomplishments to feel better in the moment. When an argument is based on this, it's painful to witness because you should expect more from someone that attended a well respected university.

On the other side of this, it's difficult to have a productive debate with someone that *thinks* they are informed based on self-assessment or inadequate life experience. It can be frustrating when they actually know far less than they realize. This type of ignorance can lead to a better educated, more experienced person making an inappropriate personal comment about education/training either out of frustration or as an attempt to draw attention to the depth of the problem and/or garner respect from someone incapable of recognizing when to be respectful.

To explain the comparison between a top university and a "regular" one, I will use two students I knew as an example. Both students had the same class and textbook. After a year, the top school student was tested on all content in the book. The other student was tested on only the first 30% of the book. So unlike 5 years of job experience, university experience can be rated more consistently with top schools generally demanding more of their students, usually resulting in appropriate higher expectations from those students.

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In general, it is a good indicator of what someone is capable of doing or what should be expected of them. But the role it plays in a particular discussion between two people is usually pretty thin; rarely is one's university education relevant to a particular conversation. Comments like what you witnessed should be avoided.
When faced with a foolish statement, I often prefer quips and sound bites to well reasoned arguments as most people are neither prepared nor interested in a well reasoned argument when they make a foolish statement. Here are a few to try.

"Those who can do. Those who can't teach. Those who can do neither study."

"So basically you're out of ideas and pounding the table?"

"Well, if that's what they do at then perhaps you should return to ."

Throw out a fictional institute of higher learning. Google for names. "You would never have made it at Faber College." Faber College was in "Animal House".

If you want a quip that is rooted in a well reasoned argument try, "Argumentum ad verecundiam". It means "Argument from authority", and it is one of many logical fallacies.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies>