Where I disagree is the tacit implication that, therefore university education is somehow better at being an indicator of those skills and qualities. I've seen a lot of terrible graduates who I wouldn't employ if they paid me: graduates who couldn't reason their way out of a paper bag. So I'd respectfully disagree with that implication.
It does tend to be a better indicator - just because it's not perfect doesn't make it the same.
In the world of IT, university degrees mean very little, as universities almost universally fail to teach anything useful for that industry.
There's still very few certs that mean anything. At the entry level, all of the certs are dreadful, and past the entry level, experience usually matters more than what certs you have.
Most state-administered professional certification exams have similar eligibility requirements.
You could theoretically get certified with only high school and work experience, although I don't think any employers would hire someone without a bachelor's. The degree can really be in anything though as long as you've passed an exam or two, as this shows an employer that you're serious and have learned at least something.
I believe the system works in our case because there is an ecosystem of employers, employees, recruiters, and government agencies that all buy into the exam process. It's sort of a throwback guild system that's not very similar to IT certifications such as CCNA.
What a useful certification usually actually says isn't "this person can use this tool", it's "this person has been educated in a certain way and paid attention during that education, leading to the ability to use this tool".
For the vast, vast majority of certs out there where you don't have to take a course to take the exam, you can knowledge-cram for a comparatively short period of time, then take the exam without actually having much experience, even if "only" in a lab, then forget most of what you've learned shortly afterwards. As a result, few employers care about them.
If you want to do certs separate from education paths, you have to figure out a better way of testing people - possibly real-world (or at least lab-based, scenario-oriented) testing over a period of time.