PhD training prepares people for the academic career and faculty positions. Less than half of PhD graduates actually end up in the academic career. So yes, you could say the system is ...not perfect.
In 17th century Leiden, 40% of surgeons' apprentices dropped out. In Utrecht's Coopers' Guild, only about 10% of apprentices became Masters.
On the other hand, getting rid of the guilds in the 1820s and replacing it with less formalized vocational training during industrialization didn't change the system for better:
>A lengthy contribution in the journal of the Dutch Society to Advance Industry in 1891 criticised the condition of Dutch training in detail: ‘Nowadays boys leave one boss after the other for the greatest triviality . . .. The boss continuously fears that the boy will leave him to use his acquired skills with another boss. Bosses therefore slow down training by putting boys to work at specialised repetitive tasks, so that they bring in the highest profits.’
Imagine if a trade school only had a 50% employment rate for their intended purpose and forced the students to work at a fraction of their market value for the privilege of attending, while profiting off that labor...I don't think imperfect would be the word used.