There might be a reason for that: if the modern corporation is built upon breaking work down into ever-tinier units, hierarchically, then the vast majority of positions available will focus on performing one very specialized, tightly-defined task with exceptional accuracy and consistency.

And then because there are fewer positions that involve strategic planning at the top of the pyramid, the relative status and financial compensation for those positions will be higher. The causality runs from hierarchy -> job descriptions -> pay scales & status -> educational system, not the other way around. As all the folks who graduated college/gradschool with loads of student debt but no positions available know, it does no good for everyone to train to be at the top when the top only has so many positions available.

It's an interesting thought experiment to imagine what the world would look like if we got rid of hierarchy entirely. YC was built on this premise [1]; it will be curious to see if it actually succeeds in eliminating hierarchy or if it just replaces one set of hierarchies with a different one, with different folks at the top.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html