When/where did you experience that? When I cooked at this level in nyc in the 2000s only about half of the line cooks had been to culinary school. And of the ones that had, almost all had been serious line cooks before going, I only ever ran into a handful who went straight into school first. Shit I don't think most of the good cooking schools would even take you without experience? Maybe this has changed in the last decade, but probably not completely.
In france and probably the rest of europe yeah almost all serious cooks have formal education in it. Mostly because "formal education in it" is a specific track in vocational high school that everyone has access to.
And that's completely false. You don't leave culinary school as a chef if you're going into the restaurant business, you're a line cook or prep cook, and your knowledge lets you advance much more quickly than everyone else. Sure you can get a "kitchen manager" sort of job in a hotel or cafeteria or something, but any restaurant hiring people into non-entry-level positions out of culinary school aint winning no awards. A huge portion of the famous chefs never went to culinary school. When I graduated, I was a line cook working for a guy who never went to school and he was one of the most talented chefs I've ever encountered.
In france and probably the rest of europe yeah almost all serious cooks have formal education in it. Mostly because "formal education in it" is a specific track in vocational high school that everyone has access to.