I agree with you that there are a lot of people who are extremely valuable to an economy despite not having a degree. However I would suggest that a degree is s

I agree with you that there are a lot of people who are extremely valuable to an economy despite not having a degree. However I would suggest that a degree is still a good bar to have in place. - The average quality of the with-degree pool is subject to a lower bound, which helps reduce the number of applicants to a manageable level. This is important because there are a lot of potential applicants out there, too many to humanly sort through in any kind of fair way. - Getting a degree is mostly based on merit and effort. There are exceptions but in a great deal of the world a sufficiently motivated person can scrape together enough money to get a degree. I can't think of another verifiable discriminator that can be used worldwide where that can be said to be true. Certainly in a European country where degrees tend to be highly subsidized (my BEng and MEng cost me less than $25k in total, all of which was covered by government loans) making someone get one before you look at them for immigration or some types of jobs doesn't seem unwarranted.