Arguably medicine shouldn't be considered a degree. The joke goes that it's 97 GCSEs taken over 5 years, and that would be about right for the academic part of it. So the genie's already out of the bottle when it comes to vocational qualifications being recognised as degrees...
Really, 90% of what going to university is about, is going to live away from home amongst people with a different background to your own and how to prioritise work and play with nobody looking too closely over your shoulder. Whether an ATPL achieves this, I don't know.