I don't know if that's true. I've had some pretty awesome pastries in French speaking Africa, made by French trained patissiers. Pastries that rivaled ones made in France. And this was in hot and humid climates.
Like "software engineer", "chef" is a pretty much unregulated title. You can be hired as a "chef" as a fairly low skilled short order cook, or as a highly skilled, highly trained master of fine fusion cuisine.
And at the top tiers (like people who do $2000 wedding cakes), pastry chefs are definitely highly skilled and highly trained.
I also saw this a great deal among Indians and citizens of neighboring countries when I was in grad school. It was a huge problem, so much so that the Dean sent out a letter about it. Without specifying nationalities, but everyone knew who was implicated.
I was friends with some of them who engaged in this. After being straight up asked for help during one exam, I warned them not do it, and that this behavior would get them kicked out of school here, but it didn't matter. Most were very smart and talented, and really didn't need to cheat. But they did anyway. Cultural thing, I guess.
You know, I always heard this, and I have kind of a morbid fascination with old mainframe technologies, even though I've never used any professionally. So I looked pretty deeply into that job scene. Turns out the vast majority of the jobs hiring for COBOL etc pay 70,000 to 80,000 a year. It's not bad pay in some parts of the country, and the hours are generally reasonable. But they're not really, really good salaries.
I worked in one of those roles for a year or so, though in the UK. From the salaries you quote, I assume you mean the US? In the UK that sort of money is quite good.
The salary you quote, converted to UK money, is about right for entry-level roles. I was hired in that company at a graduate level and I had no experience of mainframes whatsoever when I got the job (which I hunted down out of the same morbid fascination you mention).
My older colleagues though, the ones with 30+ years experience, they would be getting much better money than that. It would depend on the position also, but I heard of at least one graybeard who was asked back from retirement, because the company couldn't afford to lose his expertise.
Now, I don't know what they paid him, but I'm pretty sure it's what I call a really, really good salary.
It pays sensibly because it's a job that really needs to be done, but it
doesn't pay too well because it's not a rocket science and it's easy to find
somebody who can be trained to do it.
