Everyone I've met with these skills has either a masters degree or a PhD. I do know several people who got their PhD earlier in their careers who are really into AI now, but they had the foundational math skills to keep current as new papers were published.
I can't tell you if one program is better than another, as it's a bit out of my area of expertise.
The foundational math skills are linear algebra, calculus, and statistics. They are bog standard math anyone with a university education in the sciences should be comfortable with. The only math that's possibly more obscure are the higher level statistics tricks like graphical models, but those can be picked up from a textbook.
I can't tell you if one program is better than another, as it's a bit out of my area of expertise.