The medical guild used The Flexner Report (1910) [1] to eliminate opportunities for people to train as doctors:
The Report (also called Carnegie Foundation
Bulletin Number Four) called on American medical
schools to enact higher admission and graduation
standards, and to adhere strictly to the
protocols of mainstream science in their teaching
and research. Many American medical schools fell
short of the standard advocated in the Flexner
Report and, subsequent to its publication, nearly
half of such schools merged or were closed
outright. Colleges in electrotherapy were closed.
The Report also concluded that there were too
many medical schools in the USA, and that too
many doctors were being trained. A repercussion
of the Flexner Report, resulting from the closure
or consolidation of university training, was
reversion of American universities to male-only
admittance programs to accommodate a smaller
admission pool.
The Guild has been fairly successful at keeping the number of doctors educated just below the number of needed. Foreign-educated doctors are imported to fill the gap.
The question remains: is there any residual value left in the advice and the "training"?
Or, more importantly, is there significant value in the advice?
Because if the answer to that question is affirmative, then even if I agree with you, it is a worthy pursuit.
Note that value in advice is context sensitive. What might be amazing, valuable advice in 2009 may be standard stuff that you can get off many different courses in 2019.
But while there are many places where you can learn to put the customer first and do some prototyping, there are a limited number of places you can learn what is happening now. ("Sure, in 2011 you could get funding by showing your user studies, but not an investor expects the product to be smart enough to learn the user's preferences on the fly" or whatever).
Beyond that, these sorts of things exist in many cities, they're just not called YC. I'm not against it or anything, I just think that what you're proposing exists in some form already, just without the brand. If YC could add to that experience on a larger scale, it's a great idea. Not trying to talk you out of it or anything.
1. I am in a tiny out-of-the-way place, and nothing remotely like this exists here (hint: there are three meetup groups, two of which are defunct, and one of which caters to moms who want to meet with kids).
2. It doesn't have to be YC. Who else can do this kind of thing? Onemonth.com? Udacity? They don't seem to be as current as Ycombinator.
To provide an example, consider law schools and the ABA versus medical schools and the AAMC:
There are many ABA-accredited law schools, from which a degree will allow you to sit for the bar exam in a given state. The "real" law schools (let's say the Top 14 for now, with full disclosure that I attended a much shittier law school) provide a very similar education to everyone else even down through Tier 4. The network gets you hired into the big firms with greater ease from HLS and the rest of the Top 14. Everyone else has the same law license (provided they pass the bar), but the opportunities are markedly different for most. And before any fellow Tier 3/4'ers want to flame me for this, come on, you 100% know it's true. I think I've done pretty well, but I also stopped practicing law to do it.
Now, an AAMC-accredited education, on the other hand, provides a lot more parity out of the gate when it comes to opportunity. Med school slots roughly match up with the number of residency slots in a given year, and more or less everyone matches. Not everyone gets to do Ortho/Plastic, but that has more to do with how well you did in med school, versus which med school you attended. The school itself still factors for some specialties, but not nearly to the degree that it would in law. You can be a pretty average med student and still walk out with a residency, license and reasonably good income.
YC is more like #2.