This is pretty much how I viewed law school.
As the purchase of a commission.
However, I can't *sell* it, so it's not quite like one, since it's non-transferable.
From Martin Hutchinson:
"In other jobs, the requirement for a degree seems purely a matter of bureaucracy. For example degree-learning is little used in the major banks and consultancies, yet few rise in those professions without a college degree. The federal government also is over-impressed by academic attainment, with many employees holding higher degrees, albeit generally from third and fourth tier colleges, without any great need for the skills those colleges have supposedly imparted. Finally, while schoolteachers may be thought to need some modest qualification in education skills, those qualifications are not available without the prerequisite of a college degree, the skills of which are often never used in the teacher's career.
The requirement for degrees in large bureaucracies that do not use the skills learned can be equated to the requirement in the British Army before 1870 for the purchase of commissions. In both cases, there was no implied requirement for skill in the tasks undertaken by the bureaucracy, but simply a desire that the incoming bureaucrat or officer be "one of us" who had paid his/her dues to enter the organization concerned.
Commission purchase was derided by Victorian reformers as keeping the Army unprofessional and dominated by the aristocracy. In reality it had certain logistical advantages; for one thing if promotion had been only by seniority, by the time of the Crimean War, after forty years of peace, all the colonels would have been 70 – as it was too many of them were. It also provided an automatic pension scheme since an officer wishing to retire simply sold his commission and used the proceeds as a pension.
Note the financial similarity between commission purchase and 4-year college. An infantry captain in 1837 earned 192 pounds annually, while his commission cost 1,800 pounds, or 9.4 years' purchase. At the top of the scale, a cavalry lieutenant-colonel earned 600 pounds, while his commission cost 6,175 pounds or 10.3 years' purchase. At the bottom of the scale, an infantry ensign's commission cost only 4.7 years' purchase, presumably reflecting the lesser demand for such a low-paid post"
http://www.prudentbear.com/2013/06/colleges-may-be-next-burst-bubble.html#.UcHO3PmG2uw
