Welp, there ya go. The bolded and red text in your post points out the possible. I would say that Walker might well be a person who fits into that category of being educated. Disclaimer: I'm in no way implying Walker's intelligence is equal to, more than, less than Washington or Lincoln. Merely pointing out he's an educated person without an official college credential.
Obviously the following folks didn't have an official college credential, but were, in their own right, educated:
Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell, Inc., dropped out of college at 19.
Henry Ford never graduated high school.
Bill Gates, a college dropout after attending 2 years.
John D. Rockefeller Sr., a high school dropout, became the first American billionaire.
Steven Spielberg briefly attended State University in Long Beach, CA.
Mark Zuckerberg dropped out in his sophomore year of college.
So in essences, especially in our society today, yes, the value of a lot of types of non-technical, non-medical degrees are often based on social perception rather than concrete education.
And obviously, the world has become more complex, more technical. There is the necessity of creating institutions charged with creating standards of practice within certain professional disciplines. Those institution must ensure that all who chooses to engage in the public practice of a respective discipline is competent and skilled enough to participate in the profession. Those institutions are also charge with the responsibility to policing all practicing members.
Perhaps there needs to be an institution created for setting the standards and policing the professional disciplines of "Political Spinning, Public Deception, Special Interests Cultivation, Taxpayer Exploitation."