Does educational qualification matter in leadership roles?

Another old debate – does educational qualification matter in leadership roles ?

Let me be very frank here, I find these sort of debates very disturbing – probably I belong to so called unproductive useless current educational system and feel no matter how irrelevant your course material or syllabus was (which ever course you have done) the fact that you spend atleast 3-4 years acquiring the knowledge (or the degree)  is one of the important achievement in your life. People including me now complain about the current education system, but deep down I also know whatever I am today is because of the same education. Of course things could have been better but looking back I enjoyed my school and college days m enjoyed learning and spending time at the educational institutions (purely for academic reasons) from the regular board exams to college degree exams to post grad open book exams have gone through all and I am proud of what I have become because of my education.

After Graduation when I joined an IT company as fresher, many of my colleagues as fresh as me were from IITS, REC/NIT and other prestigious institutes, they were getting atleast  5- 10 times more than what I was earning , and we did precisely the same work. Did I not feel exploited ? Yes , and very angry also but I had to accept the fact that these people had put in lot of  effort (and probably had little better brains) to get into the prestigious colleges and probably they deserved some brownie points, but with each year of experience getting added  I also realized lot of things can change based on your performance and capabilities, your strengths -  it was not just about Degree from so and so university. But fact remains that your Pedigree is some where related to the ‘degrees’ and from you get these degrees, its not just matter of getting the degrees its about the exposure also , exposure which broadens your thinking capability. 

No am not saying that people who don’t have Degrees are illiterate or are good for nothing , but at the same time people who did not go to college and who are popular figures in show business, become leaders because of their popularity and if they should be made leaders or decision makers in field like education, science and technology , space research  etc then probably they should have some real solid interest or experience in such field. ... ...