As I said, Ron, GUE does it this way for the reasons I stated. It's not because there is no other dive gear that works. My husband likes his Balance (although he never dives it except in the pool). GUE wants to put students in gear that they will never have to change, no matter what they may eventually decide to do with their diving. (And nobody needs to be overweighted in a backplate system -- just change the material of the backplate!)
I have to admit, I found the dry suit thing a bit odd, too. The T1 class we watched in Egypt was done in dry suits, but at least you have the reasonable concern about very deep diving wet, and redundant buoyancy. For shallow reef diving, I'd have started them in wetsuits. But maybe he was thinking about the diving they would later do at home? Because they all came from places where they would need to dive dry, if they dove locally.
I can tell you that the GUE Training Council doesn't think you have to dive dry in Egypt (she says, remembering Richard Lundren's bare legs disappearing into the holds of more than one wreck . . . )