>I think what you really need are smart people, and people who are willing to put in the work to get past the first few years of stumbling and not knowing what anything means.

I totally agree with you, but that doesn't solve the issue, there are not that many of those people out there struggling to get jobs, because employers already know about this trick. That's why a bunch of quant and other top-tier finance shops are full of math and physics grads who had almost zero knowledge of finance before getting hired for those jobs.