I agree with what you said, it is a shit show. but I wish it weren't so.

My good friend is a civil engineer and for him to obtain a Professional Engineer license (PE) he had to complete a four-year college degree, work under a PE licensed engineer for at least four years, pass two intensive competency exams and earn a license from their state's licensure board. Then, to retain their licenses, PEs must continually maintain and improve their skills throughout their careers.

This licencing approach is prohibitive to just "pay your way" through. This never caught on in software and computer eng because of how quickly it was (and still is) changing. But certain pillars are becoming better defined such as CI/CD, production-safe code & practices, DevOps.