Paymeister's education history is as applicable as yours or mine (BSc Aerospace, MS / PhD Mechanical engineering). It's what you learn over the course of your career, and how you apply it. For me, 15+ years of consulting in the field, starting as a green-bean analyst, taught me not only how to do the analysis but how to interpret what it means to the business.

Having the drive (and attention to detail) to work with data is really more important than your education, IMO. You can learn the technology, but for many, it's not so easy to learn how to see the forest for the leaves on the trees... decision or otherwise. =)