As a computer science student or professional that places you in a rather nice position. This issue could prove to be a gold mine for you. You will never look at data and problem solving the same way again. Markup languages are still in their infancy, meaning you are on the ground floor of learning something that is going to prove useful to organizations in the very near future. The basics of markup languages offer solutions to several problems plaguing today's businesses.
Markup languages are human readable and separate structure from presentation.
The human readability of markup languages provides us with a way to keep data free from proprietary binary formats. Instead of some esoteric binary blob, we have plain text that we can read and build around without depending on proprietary technologies. With this freedom we can limit the need for re-engineering if we decide to move to another tool or technology. By the same token, it frees us from the upgrade path many vendors push on us to squeeze money out of our IT budgets. Therefore, the human readability of markup languages provide us with freedom and flexibility.