By the time one is early/mid 20s they would be nearing master level in skill. Would have faced the real world for 7-8 years, know how the world works in terms of money, dealing with customers, and so on.
Compare that with today, by early 20s one is only getting out of college undergrad. About to start the real world job training.
Yeah, they are different domains. I don't mind options for those who want to pursue an acedemic approach compared to a practical one. But for most fields we just don't have that choice anymore. Getting hand on experience? Gotta be recruited from acedemia first.
More reason to vye for labor protections. If they realize they can't just rotate out people every 6-20 months they may actually go back to fostering talent instead of treating acedemia like a cattle farm.
We simply stopped doing that. A decade of apprenticeship reduced down to 3 months of shadowing during summer.