> PhD is not schooling. It's a research job. You get paid to do a PhD.

No not really. A PhD student at most receives a scholarship, and currently at least in Europe has to undergo a curricular part comprised of a dozen or so courses. How does that not count as schooling?

If I'm not mistaken the only exception to the schooling requirement is if a student is able to publish a few research papers on a topic that are coherent and related to a concrete research topic that could support their thesis.