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That's pretty much a question of culture and the field.
In Germany, it's pretty much impossible to get into some jobs without a degree. In others, you get a higher salary for having a degree, to the point where some companies will not take you for a position because your degree makes you too expensive. In the public sector, your highest degree determines your salary scale (and most importantly where it caps out).
Not saying the system is good like that, but it is currently that way, so at the very least here, degree often corresponds to higher salary.
In Finland when public sector is doing a competitive procurement from the private sector, e.g. an IT project, by law they have to prefer the company with higher educated employees. A lot of talented people in IT don't have degrees, so those people don't get hired to public sector jobs or even to private sector that has public sector as a client.
All public sector IT projects here have been gigantic, expensive shit shows.