is highly lucrative on the backs of overworked labor

You need to think about WHY this situation happens. I'm willing to believe grouped negotiations can bring value to a class of workers but it's a partial remedy to a bad situation.

  but when you're graduating out of university with a fat debt

Paying expensive university could be a really bad decision, especially in markets like game industry / software dev, which doesn't require by law that you pass some exams. Funnily, once you create huge syndicates / unions for the game industry or software dev, maybe you'll see these kind of "protection" to emerge