" Correlation between having a degree and being a successful developer, after the first few years in industry, basically zero."

In my experience it's even negative. Almost every person without degree that I worked with was much better at their job than the rest. They were more driven and that's probably how they got the job too. On the other hand the code written by phds... Often I regret looking. It's not that it's not correct (usually), it's just barely usable and disconnected from reality of how/where it needs to run.