> supposed That's where shit starts to go sideways Degrees are credentials, in some countries it's everything, without those credentials you don't get to work, regardless of how much of a smart ass you are or what your practical skills really are, it's a matter of insurance, sort of. Those credentials are mere receipts saying the monkey actually performed a pack of standard tricks at least once in his life so you have a guarantee of that, as recruiter. If things go south at least you can retort "hey, this guy has his degree, he is supposed to know better", while with a candidate with no degrees... There's no "guarantee", it's kind of a bet. He might be very good at some stuffs, and completely clueless about other stuffs that all his peers are aware of... So since you never have time to verify everything and make everybody pass an exam again, you usually go for the degree guy, at least there's that, for sure... Personally I put little trust in people who practiced one million techniques, once. I would rather go for one who practiced one technique/set of techniques a million times, if I had to pick one over the other for a given task I've seen a guy with barely any degree completely out perform others with nice looking "titles" on their resume recently. The trick was that the 50yo guy spent his whole life practicing the job, as a hobby, while the rest were in the end freshly arrived/trained in that field I won't disclose. Even the instructor got out performed during some exercises, and by a fucking light year Yep A world of paper and paper pushers