Guild 2.0

Remember history class, when they taught you about the guild system in the middle ages?
There were two problems with the guild system, if I can remember:

1: Members of a guild colluded with each other to fix prices.
2: Members of a guild enforced a high barrier to entry.

So, it turns out you'll get the same treatment in culinary school:

Graduates go into debt for school, and are encouraged to go further in debt. Everything from knives, expensive (research) dinners, uniforms- all this gets piled on top of the already ridiculous level of tuition.

I did a little thinking, and I realized education is the guild system all over again, only in many ways it's worse. If you want to be a teacher, you have to bow to the education gods, regardless of whether or not you already have a degree in a particular field. A similar issue can be found in libraries; you'd be surprised how extremely simple jobs require far more education than necessary.

I think the current system could be even worse than the guild system, at least for the entrant into the field. I wish I could attract the attention of the economists with this question. Guild behavior has been considered bad for society in general, but I think education's current relationship with government tends to distort the original intent of education, which now appears to be a way for various competitors to keep younger competitors out of the field longer. Of course, when they do get into the field, they are already paying a rather large debt.

Mitigating factors? Well, for some fields we don't have to do this. It's entirely possible the aspiring chef would be better off working hard and saving during while his contemporaries are at school. The real way to make it in the culinary world is to own a restaurant. A degree is not required; admittedly it's probably easier to get funding if you have one.

Hate to end on a bad note, but I just realized how much worse it is for people in medicine. Sure, in a true free market, a medical education would still be hard, but who knows how much malarkey they can sneak into such a field? After all, they are already putting obvious bluster into the fields I mentioned.