Lawyers, doctors, MBAs, foreign students at UK universities...pilots are not the only ones...
Absolutely right!
A doctors job (GP) is virtually the same as a commercial pilots job in terms of pay and the length of time it takes to get there.
A doctor can expect to earn £45k to £50k, 5 years afer graduating, when the starting wage is around £20k. I would say thats very similar to a pilot. When experienced a GP can expect to earn in the region of £110k, this is the same as an experienced long haul captain.
In terms of training, it costs much more to train a Doctor than it does a pilot. The NHS can expect to pay in excess of £250k for each Doctor they train, most of this is paid for by the NHS, a Doctor usually starts their career with around 50k of debt.
The above is similar for lawyers too.
So as pilots we are actually better of in terms of cost of training (unless we pay to go integrated). The job at the end may not be as good or as easy to get, but its what we want to do, so why do anything different.