Certainly in the UK, the system went in the other direction: all the "polytechnic" technical colleges training people in practical skills got uprated to "universities" years ago, and the big Blairite expansion of universities was similarly not focused on "trades".

Why? Class. Having a degree and having been to university is such a pre-requisite to being middle class here, far more so than money.

It is also a common problem that certain influential jobs preferentially recruit from certain schools; so people apply to Stanford as a prerequisite for Google just as they apply to École Nationale d'Administration if they want to be part of the French government.