I have heard of people who held an aviation degree but still hadn’t passed their CASA ATPL exams since the CASA pass mark was higher than the uni pass mark.
Nothing against degrees, they are certainly not a bad thing, but where is the evidence to prove that degree qualified pilots are any better? I would be very interested to see a proper non-biased study of long term airline sim and line check performance (which naturally includes CRM etc) versus academic
qualifications (note that degree status is not an indicator of intelligence).
I will hypothesise now that there would be no correlation. It really does just come down to the individual. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find people with a practical trade background coming out on top.