A thought or two:-
John.F - Couldn't agree with you more. Very hard to train, and often against significant management pressure - but yes, vitally important.
Tester78 - Agree also, but I'd never wish to denegrate some very good FTEs out there who don't go flying. There are certainly pilots I've worked with whose understanding of engineering is better than a few engineering graduates I've worked with - so it's inevitably a blurred line.
Reinhardt - "an engineer is a mechanic". The English language does the engineering profession no favours and the terms engineer, technician and mechanic are all ambiguous, but you're not helping either. However, (and I "speak" as somebody with a better university education than most) you are wrong in almost any part of the world. Degree certificates are useful, but they're absolutely no substitute for a demonstrated skill in the job.
Much the same might be said of pilots licences - you obviously need the licence to fly the relevant flying machine, and in some environments there's significant benefit in having graduated from a particular (type of) specialist training school. But, ultimately, you need to prove you can do the job well enough for the programme.
G