I view it as an arms race. We even went beyond college degrees being common. Now it's fairly common to also do grad school and other resumé-padding. Yeah that means more learning, but there's also a big zero-sum aspect to this.

Specific example is medical school/residency. To "DMZ" this, they'd need to ignore anything students do during gap years, ignore research too unless it's an MD-PhD program. Everyone should be going straight through unless some personal challenge forces them to delay.

I don't look to CS as an example because it's an unusual bubble on top of all that. CS degrees also became super competitive and subsequently worthless around 2000.