I have seen PhDs fail to be effective teachers.
Equally, I have seen effective teachers fail to be PhDs.....following your analogy of course!
From my personal POV the assessment of "Creamie" suitability was based upon your aircraft handling skill, capacity to learn/retain quickly and overall credibility (professionalism, bearing and communication skills), albeit on the Hawk/Tucano. Perfectly recruited for the task!
As a Front Line instructor I witnessed both Creamies and ab-initio pilots on the OCU re-datum their expectations of grandeur in short order when they realised there was a hell of a lot more to being an RAF pilot than demonstrating a stalling package with perfect "instructional patter."
Cometh the hour, cometh the man (or woman)... was/is always true.