Half of modern academia, for one. Universities have turned into degree mills with the expectation that >50% of the population requires a college degree, regardless of whether they actually have any interest or need for one beyond doing it because it's a prerequisite for a good career, independent of whether said career actually uses the knowledge in any way.

Not that I actually agree that math was at the right level of gatekeeping. It definitely feels intentionally opaque beyond reason, and I think it's why LLMs are able to cut through the obfuscation and solve problems that maybe wouldn't actually have been considered quite so hard if mathematicians did a better job of making their work accessible.