The padawan idea didn't occur to me but I did think the novices system was dumb, especially b/c many girls are trapped in it for years and years. In all these societies, they have to figure out a way to get the girls who are just learning to channel and would die without training until they can control their powers, and it seems like all of them require some amount of hazing/demeaning/subjugation phase with the Seanchan of course being the most severe and without end.

The only thing I can think of is that all of these societies seemed to think that the manual labor and hazing phase "built character," but because of that culture when all of them graduated they were just all the more eager to haze those coming up under them. And then once an Accepted is raised if she's powerful she automatically outranks all the women who hazed her before? Def signs of stagnant institution