I believe your application is graded against how many criteria you meet or exceed. i.e: Total time, turbine, degree, ATPL etc..
Therefore it is nor a prerequisite to have a degree but if you have one and the next bloke doesn't you will have more chance of being offered an interview, in otherwords have all or at least more of the boxes ticked than your competition.
Although there is a minimum total time required as per the website and turbine is not technically required, having more total time and turbine will mean you meet more criteria that will give your application a better "score"