I would say that the lackadaisical standards that PADI has set for their instructors (which you seem to be reluctant to to comment on) makes for crappy divers and sub standard instructors Bob. The fact that you are turning a blind eye to the fact that the go-to agency of the free world is churning out untold numbers of crap divers is a bit naive on your part. I don't believe the average newly CERTIFIED diver realises how undertrained and underqualified they are to actually dive. Same goes for AOW divers that took the courses back to back. Take it for what it is Bob, you know better.
The only thing is, practically all non-divers know someone who is a diver.....that "diver" is going to be asked, by the non-diver interested in getting certified, where they should go for it--what are the "diver's" recommendations.
Right now, the "divers" are lackadaisical about answering, and many will say any dive shop, or they will just recommend the shop where they go for air fills. However, each diver needs to wake up, and realize that there are so many bad instructors, that their advice to non-divers is
critical advice....Divers really need to think about who they will recommend. Right now, I don't think most do. Some divers, may not even have any idea of the skill level characteristic of the dive Shop they use for air fills ( the one conveniently close to them, easiest to use).
This is not easy either....how many of you that have a local diveshop you frequent, have ever actually seen their instructors in the water, doing an OW I class? Even as easy as this is for divers in Palm Beach, with BHB as a hotbed for training, I'd say the majority of our divers have never watched "their" diveshops instructors perform a class. If we can't be knowledgable here, I don't really know how divers everywhere else can handle this.
Maybe things are bad enough so that divers will decide they need to make the extra effort. Maybe they do need to find out if the instructor ( that they might recommend) at the local shop, was one that did 40 or 50 dives tops, and is now an instructor...a 90 day wonder. Or worse, maybe they need to find out if the local instructor is a long time guy with terrible skills and bad teaching habits. We are long past the day when you can just assume any instructor is a good instructor.
The other side of this....the really good instructors DESERVE to be heralded as the best...they are the ones that deserve the recommendations, and the people flocking to them..not the bad instructors.
If all of us made it a point to really know the few really awesome instructors in our own areas, and to make sure THEY are the ones that got recommended by all other divers--to non-divers or new divers...then students would learn vastly better skills, and become much better, safer divers...And the really awesome instructors would start making real money, because their time would be in demand.
The mediocre instructors would also have a REASON to strive to be awesome; right now, too many do not!