It's worth pointing out that they came to this conclusion by looking at job postings. If a company is large enough to have some HR person creating job postings

It's worth pointing out that they came to this conclusion by looking at job postings. If a company is large enough to have some HR person creating job postings, then they're going to come from this mindset that education acts as a convenient filter for separating "the wheat from the chaff". It can sound dumb as all hell, but it's the best broken solution they can come up with because it's easy to glance at a resume, see the letters "MIT" and put it in a different pile from the people who came from New Mexico State (or some other generic university in a predominantly rural area). I don't agree a degree, and I've done pretty well for myself, but it's worth pointing out that I've never applied for a formal job ad. I've relied on friends and I've relied on networking events where I showed off some cool thing I made and found out after the fact that the person I showed it off to was an influencer when it came to hiring at their company. So to sum things up, I think it's safe to say that companies hire by degrees because that process scales pretty well, whereas hiring by portfolio really doesn't. Nonetheless, if a dropout can prove themselves even modestly well, then they've got a job.