This applies to most fields. Far more people get advanced education now but just necessarily as you cater to a larger group of people you have to diminish the end goal and operate more by procedures and standardization. That reverberates and diminishes the skills of the more competent people who would have been able to learn all of the above a century ago, because now all the institutions cater to a larger body. I disagree about it being a mirror of the period as some absolute rule though. Insurance policies, building code/zoning, educational structures and the rest are all choices people make. The cost thing is always absurd to me as in medieval guild systems during the great plague people found resources to build great cathedrals. Acting like cathedrals were cheaper then compared to now is just absurd. We have the resources we just choose to use it to create trash and then burn it, and to punish anyone who tries to make anything that isn't trash.

It has nothing to do with that. Architecture has to branches - artistic and technical one. These people are the technical kind of architects. It is a STEM field and job. They do a lot of math, physics and that sort of thing is school. Because, the kind of jobs they get require that.