An article from Nature,”Do Scientists really need a PhD” ?  talks about BGI in Shenzen, a research center where almost no one has a PhD . Can they churn out cool stuff ? I think they will.

Ken Robinson says in his TED talk that there is an academic inflation all around us. For jobs that require BA, you need to have an MA. For jobs that need an MA, you need to have a Phd and so on… So Very True! World has given too much importance to degrees where actually what matters is , the attitude towards work and how much you care about what you do ?

More so, in the financial world , where financial variables mingle with human behaviour, I think one does not need a PhD to develop a useful model( atleast I tend to believe that way:) ). Anyone who has an intuitive sense of the problem at hand and one who exhibits some specific traits of PhD like persistence, deep thinking and willingness to solve hard problems, is good enough to bring out an interesting and useful model.  Note that most of them are soft skills as technical skills can always be built if the former skills are taken care of.