Complaining about high certification costs is nothing new - it's been a growing pain since the dawn of IT certifications. If you can decode the author's stream

Complaining about high certification costs is nothing new - it's been a growing pain since the dawn of IT certifications. If you can decode the author's stream of consciousness ramblings you'll come to the conclusion is that all training and testing should be free because the later investment into the platform will make up the difference. There's some validity to this, but the author is missing the point that the costs create a barrier to entry, resulting in fewer trained/certified. This is an exclusivity tactic (remember the MCSE?) used by companies to not only ensure that their users are well trained but also to ensure that there aren't too many certified thereby increasing the value of those that are certified.