What really seemed to work against Harold was his army. The Normans used combined warfare with archers, cavalry, and ground forces. As I recall, the English forces consisted of only infantry. Combine that with the fact that they broke rank to chase down the fleeing Flemish forces only to be caught in a deadly counter-attack really didn't seem to favor them.

Had Harold had disciplined troops in greater numbers, I'm sure their phalanx would have held.

Pretty much all the arts, letters, and sciences work the same way: you can go straight from a Bachelor's into a Ph.D. program, and many do. Many also get a Master's first, particularly if a Master's carries weight in their field (teachers, social workers, engineers, etc.)

There's also the saying that "nobody pays for a Ph.D.", if a department actually wants you in their Ph.D. program, they will find funding for you (or you can win funding on your own, for instance through NSF). If they won't even offer you a TA'ship, it's a good sign they haven't fallen in love with the idea of you being one of their students.

To a large extent I stand corrected.

I'll have to keep that in mind when I'm making my plans for the near future. I've got some thoughts on topics which would warrant a PhD. Assuming of course I did the work underlying them to make a contribution. Few ideas are worthy of a PhD in and of themselves. And even those are typically backed with actual research.

I can only speak for my own field and institution, but for me there was a bit more than just having money. For my MBA, you had to have a certain GPA and an acceptable score on the standardized GMAT exam (I don't remember exactly what it was). As others have said, it is more common for the students themselves to pay for master's programs, although I was lucky and was funded through a research assistantship. For the PhD, you again had to have some kind of master's degree, preferably in your PhD field, but I sort of slipped through the cracks and was accepted anyway! Along with that are minimum GPA scores and a good score on another standardized exam, the GRE. There were a few students that were self-funded in the PhD program, but it was an exception. It is just too expensive and time consuming to complete most PhDs without some kind of income and a tuition waiver. I was funded for all but my first semester.