Of course... various industries have found that certifications without an education path tie-in are near-pointless. Why? Because nobody can figure out how to do certification exams very well.
What a useful certification usually actually says isn't "this person can use this tool", it's "this person has been educated in a certain way and paid attention during that education, leading to the ability to use this tool".
For the vast, vast majority of certs out there where you don't have to take a course to take the exam, you can knowledge-cram for a comparatively short period of time, then take the exam without actually having much experience, even if "only" in a lab, then forget most of what you've learned shortly afterwards. As a result, few employers care about them.
If you want to do certs separate from education paths, you have to figure out a better way of testing people - possibly real-world (or at least lab-based, scenario-oriented) testing over a period of time.
What a useful certification usually actually says isn't "this person can use this tool", it's "this person has been educated in a certain way and paid attention during that education, leading to the ability to use this tool".
For the vast, vast majority of certs out there where you don't have to take a course to take the exam, you can knowledge-cram for a comparatively short period of time, then take the exam without actually having much experience, even if "only" in a lab, then forget most of what you've learned shortly afterwards. As a result, few employers care about them.
If you want to do certs separate from education paths, you have to figure out a better way of testing people - possibly real-world (or at least lab-based, scenario-oriented) testing over a period of time.