Corollary being: can a PhD make up for lack of real world experience?
There's a quote I kinda forgot, but it goes something like:
"Did you experience the same thing 10 times, or did you experience 10 years worth?"
And I think this is true for a lot of real world experience, you don't necessarily have 10 year of it even though you've worked 10 years, you have 10 times the same experience.