Masters in Electrical Engineering, focus on digital IC design.
Without it - and it being from a prestigious university here in Germany - I would never have landed the job I currently have (first job after university). Also, initial pay was fixed on whether you have a PhD or not.
But I think, for everything after this initial job and salary, the diploma doesn’t matter at all anymore. Also from fellow students I hear, that this focus on the diploma is very prevalent in Germany but not so much in other countries.
Yield over die area should be the metric.
If you have a chip that is 50% of the wafer area, a single fault will lead to a yield of 50%. Now compare it with a chip that is 1% of the wafer area, the same single fault gets a yield of 99%.
So comparing the yields of two processes without factoring in the die area is not a fair game.