My wife used to teach English to court reporting students, a profession where someone with a high school education can make well over $100K. However, even more so than cooking schools, the true success rate has always been very low, maybe 5 percent or so. The rest drop out or never develop the skills to pass the state test (here in California a reporter has to be able to take 200 words per minutes with less than a 1% error rate, including grammar and spelling). It's a bit like learning to play the piano -- anyone can pound out chopsticks but few make it to Carnegie Hall.
Anyway, the schools became rackets. Many were bought up by so-called adult education corporations, the sort of outfits that advertise on late-night TV ("Get a great job as a medical receptionist and impress your friends!"). The "ad reps" or admission representatives became the core of the business, recruiting clearly unqualified students (high school dropouts, poor English skills, even the deaf) and signing them up for federal loans, telling them that they don't have to pay them back. Many of the schools became little more than poorly disguised schemes for getting federal money and sticking the unsuspecting students with the bills. And some students hung on for years, piling up huge debts in the process (my wife had a couple of students who had been at her school for 14 years!).
So, the feds cracked down and imposed numerous rules, the same that they apply to various trade schools. There had to be a set completion time, I think 3 or 4 years, and after that the students could attend at no charge; there had to be a very high placement rate, something like 90% IIRC, etc. etc. That pulled the rug out from under the corporations' money laundering scheme, and most either closed their doors or dropped court reporting in favor of things like computer repair. The net result has been a huge decline in the number of schools, and consequently a lack of qualified reporters. Yes, audio and video recording has helped fill the gap, but most judges and attorneys find such recordings to be far less satisfactory than a written transcript, which can be easily searched, marked up, copied to documents, etc.
The federal rules were undoubtedly necessary because of the abuses, but both the profession and society have suffered as a result. Court reporting is not auto repair, and neither is cooking.