Yes. Learn all you can about all of the above. If you go into system administration you'll need all of them. If you go into programming it will be useful and give you an advantage even if it isn't quite as important. And finally if you stick with academics those are fundamental tools that you outta know even if you don't use them all the time.

As far as getting a job goes, since I became a Unix admin I've been laid off 3 times. The longest I was ever out of work - eight days. Unix is still a much more sought after skill than programming or Windows as far as I can tell, since friends and co-workers in those fields have a much worse time finding a job.

I'm sure I've had my share of luck too as I know some Unix people have it a lot worse than that. But the point it, as far as computer jobs go Unix seems to be relatively the best for getting and keeping jobs.

By the way - far more important than *any* computer skill when it comes to getting jobs is your people skills. I've been involved with interviewing and hiring several times, and while technical skills matter the people skills outweigh them. The reason is, for any position you apply for there will be several people technically qualified enough to do the job. So put yourselves in the interviewers shoes - out of these several candidates who are all good enough technically which will you want to hire? Obviously the one that will fit in with your team best and you think will be most pleasant to work with has a huge advantage over the guy that knows a bit more technical stuff but is lacking in people skills.