I'd like to know where you got your unsubstantiated facts from?
Who said they were unsubstantiated? A number of years ago, I was in the HR office of a large airline here in Australia. I was shown two piles of applications all of which were from experienced airline pilots. One pile looked to be roughly 60% of the total and the other, 40%. Added up they were in the hundreds.
It was pointed out to me that the applications in the smaller pile were all from qualified pilots who I described as above. None of them were being processed further because they did not have passes in Physics or Mathematics or English or all three. So while 100% of this pilot group held ATPLs, roughly 40% of them were not high school graduates as far as HR were concerned.
This is not something someone told me about; this is something I saw. I based my statement on that and the talk in here whenever the topic comes up and the number of posters who openly admit not having the quals.
As for "a lot", I was using the phrase in the manner of the economic meaning of "many" which if I remember correctly is something akin to
a substantial proportion of the total but not more than a half.