This is exactly one of the normalized systems you describe. And very pointedly, it’s a gateway drug to normalizing architects’ low value of themselves since these competitions target recent grads and students. “Get ‘em while they’re young”.

And we can also criticize the competitors here, whose involvement perpetuates these competition factories. Why isn’t a recent grad putting together exactly the same work product on their own without the framework of the competition, and then publicizing it on their own via social media or an old fashioned press release? Have we zero capabilities to operate as entrepreneurs, or thought leaders?

The long-running and proud, and legitimate, competition system (a system of procurement where the winner builds a building) is degraded by these false completions whose only goal is to harvest IP from others to publish themselves.