Something that always strikes me is how insanely complex it is to even experiment as an outsider to the university path. From my understanding a relatively simple 10+ year ago tech ASIC is still going to run like $10k USD for a shared die prototype from limited providers, compared to software, component level systems design, or even mechanical devices where you can get a local machine shop involved or at least do some parts of it yourself.

Yes, FPGA's exist but they are not even relevant when you are talking about the skillset/engineering discipline to make the FPGA itself and actually producing the physical thing.