Airlines hire Captains and managers not just FOs
Not meaning to threadjack but the degree thing keeps coming up and I cannot help but notice that it always seem like those Alan Sugar types without a degree seem to see it as unnecessary.
I don't think anyone out there is saying that having a degree makes you a better pilot. It does however make you more qualified if you have one and someone else does not. Hence why FTSE listed firms frequently have graduate recruitment and management programs. Look at the requirements for Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst Young, KPMG, All Big 5 Banks, GSK, Vodafone, Microsoft, the list goes on and on....
The reason that these firms want degrees in ANY subject is to differentiate the applicants. In the British Army it is pretty much 90% graduates who go to Sandhurst these days in the US most major airlines will not recruit a pilot without a degree. It doesn't matter what it is in it just demonstrates that your mind can work in a certain way, guarantees a certain level of education and makes all pilots they hire demonstrably more likely to be useful in roles other than flying which means that they can keep pilots who loose medicals or wish to progress to more instructional, operation or financial management based roles within the firm.
Hopefully the day will come when you cannot get a job as a pilot without a degree (OR EQUIVALENT). Before we get into the debate as to what the equivalent is I mean something that a university would accept as direct entry into a Master program i.e. significant experience at an appropriate level.
My reasoning is because a university level education should be the basis for every profession. I also think every manager in a retail chain, in sales every senior police officer, every nurse, every teacher, or similar should also have a degree. Come one lets be honest if you can study and pass the ATPL exams you can clearly achieve a degree (NOT implying the ATPL is equal it isn't) but the material is frequently at university level.
Times are changing and we need to make sure that we have less better qualified pilots than lots of pilots as we progressively lower the academic entry requirements it will actually make our industry better not worse in the long run.