It's a real shame how much importance is placed on 'academic' studies. I see it as an inherent problem with the world-wide structuring of education.
Certification is only necessary in certain fields. It's very important for medicine or engineering and fields in which incompetency puts lives at risk, but outside of that I feel that honestly it's very easy for someone to just grind to achieve a certification and then forget most of what they learned, as they only endured it for the sake of academic certification, not to necessarily because they are interested or passionate about said field.
But this is all really an incremental problem caused by financial influence. Academic importance is promoted by private academic institutions, which are mostly for profit. That's why you have to pay to 'learn'.
