in my opinion having a degree is not as necessary as your skills and ability to be able to handle a multi-function job such as a pilot. Do you know that driving a car requires more skill than flying an aircraft? yet uneducated people drive cars. At the end of the day it is only a trasnportaion mode just like a train driver, or a car driver.
With the advances in technology flying has become on of the easiest jobs one can do. The automation has been designed to put the pilot out of the cockpit.
Sure having a degree represents one's learning curve, but everything in life from the simplist action to the more advanced all require a super learning curve. Not all human beings make good pilots in term of professionalism and not all human beings make good car drivers due to thier eye-hand co-cordination.
It is all about ABILITY and the expeditious manner about which one can act in the event of an ensuing accident, armed with laid down SOPs and some common sense.
I know a lot of people I met with high degrees in both the arts and science, yet their natural ability of flying an aircraft is zero.
Having a degree is only to make life difficult for others, who have decided to persue the love of their life i.e. FLYING when they have finished their High school.
P.S. I know of someone who is now a captain on the B747-400 with BA, and his previous job was a MILK MAN. They have tagged him the " Flying Milk man"