FWIW, of all the people I knew who went from aspirant to flying big stuff for airlines, only one of them didn't have a degree or equivalent--although he did work his arse off as a dispatcher for a certain low-cost airline for a number of years, until the base captain put him up for the sim test. The rest, half a dozen in total, were an aeronautical engineer, a geophysicist, a computer scientist, a meteorologist, and two air force officers (one pilot, one navigator)
Correlation does not imply causality, but the pattern is hard to ignore.
G-RICH:
Ignore all these grimy nail whiners and stick with a social science. It what the majority of Dave's Cabinet did - and they are running a whole country !
Could you please define "running"?
In any case, even with a technical degree that door is not completely closed. Chancellor Merkel for one has a PhD in chemistry, as I recall.