The current reductions are a joke (I make no opinion on military experience because I haven’t met anyone who has used the military exception at 750hrs). I’ve met 1500hr pilots who shouldn’t qualify and plenty more 1000hr 141 pilots who definitely don’t have the maturity or experience to succeed in training. They don’t know how to reach the application level of knowledge and everything they know is rote and at such a basic level. They do all their experience building at the same 3 airports in steam gauge vfr. Having the experience of actually needing to be a pic is priceless. Making those decisions on the fly in actual imc going into and out of unfamiliar airport, glass cockpit experience, high performance and use of autopilot all are great experience builders. Having a degree in aviation doesn’t make you a leader, more experience or a better decision maker than anyone else with higher education. You’d experience and leadership is build in the cockpit doing new things into new places. Too many 141 instructor pilots are sheltered and carried by their program and the rules set out for them. Sure it gets people ratings but once they have those ratings it does nothing to help an instructor with 250hrs learn anything till they hit 1000.

I would advocate a general reduction for any degree holder and further reduction if you meet certain experience requirements in addition to holding a college degree.