My impression of the field of data science and data scientists is that the field is reserved for phd-s and math/statistics types.
The programs written by the data scientists are pretty small - calling specialized functions.
The data scientists do not know the algorithm of the functions they call but only the general functionality of them.
On the other hand the more data the program processes (Gbytes to Tbytes) to generate a model or after deployment the more respect it gets.
And, to answer the question - in my opinion the field will be limited to people with the right education credentials.
