[lumost]

The advantage and disadvantage of an apprentice system is that practitioners cannot massively scale up their pupil count (at least normally).

This implicitly aligns incentives to a static arrangement where apprentices are training to replace their masters. It is immediately obvious to everyone which fields either can’t afford to pay their apprentices - or which fields have exceptionally long times until the apprentice can work independently. Practitioners are also strongly incentivized to only accept strong pupils who they expect to work with for many years.

The con of this model is that a great master can only teach a small number of apprentices - a great master may also be a terrible teacher.

Undoubtedly, there are some industries that should follow the apprenticeship model - however these industries also massively benefit from a university system which transfers the cost of training to the student/government. There likely should be some alignment between university costs and educational outcomes on a per major basis.