I can no longer find the source of the quote
Thats not suprising as its complete and utter rubbish.
The ATPL theory is 15/16 year old school exam level.
The vocational side of things mean that under national credits a CPL is equivelent to an HNC and ATPL equiv to a HND. Some courses will give you a thing called a foundation degree which you can also gain from doing the Management course working for MAcDonalds.
If you get up to TRI/TRE level I believe it equiv to an ordinary degree. There is a load of stuff on the open university web site some where on all the vocational crossover credits.
But thats all down the vocational line of qualifications and is only of use if your looking to gain credits to allow you to go in say at second year level on an academic degree.
There are loads and loads of pilots out there with tertiary education even ones that can't spell
and to compare ATPL to a proper degree would be insulting what we had achieved if it wasn't so funny.