"Professionalize" is an interesting way to frame this. As Milton Friedman argued, occupational licensure is almost always pursued by the practitioners rather than consumers. The licensing boards are mostly run by practicing lawyers and CPAs, so you have practicing lawyers and CPAs determining who can compete with them. So what you get are cartel-like bodies.
Most people don't know the histories of how these professions came to be what they are today in the US. If you take 15 minutes to read up on it, it leaves little doubt what the intentions are and how much consumers have been screwed.
> We never had any real body that could certify proficiency, which is what contributed to companies having to resort to leetcode and other such styles of interviewing.
Except that basically everyone in the industry knows that leetcode doesn't test real-world proficiency. It's equally dubious to believe that some sort of body (ostensibly run by practicing software developers) would be able to come up with a means to certify proficiency.
Incidentally, many of the outfits "looking to cash in on students looking to get a 6-figure job" placed a heavy emphasis on teaching their students how to interview, not how to be proficient.