Given the hostile tone of your post, I am not really sure we can have an open an honest discussion about it. I am certainly open to what you have to say, but you need to drop the hostilities and apparent bias for that to occur.
I'm happy to discuss.
However this is a subject which I'm passionate about, so I applogise in advance in my writings come across as harsh or hostile to anyone or any group, I don't' mean them to be.
This is a horse, beaten to death and resurrected (a number of times)
In the Halcyon days through rose tinted glasses, the training was longer and more intense, there were less people involved in the sport but more annual deaths in total. So perhaps the training wasn't that effective?
Those were different times though. If you had an accident you blamed yourself not others, you may have brought fins (Jet fins) that were advertised that you could kick the @"£$ out of a reef and not damage them, it was okay to ride turtles, and Jacques Cousteau was happy to dynamite a channel through a reef for his boat.
Moving on to today.
I've certified a number of Scuba divers to Open water (Scuba diver if I remember correctly only does CW 1-3 and OW 1+2) the reason, they did in on vacation and didn't' want to waste their vacation time on additional training. They just wanted to do enough to see pretty fishes.
Go stand on a sidewalk in an area with lots of dive shops. Watch people go from shop to shop looking for the fastest and cheapest course.
Yes they are offered - you can do OW in 3 longs days if you work hard - I wouldn't' teach it.
There are written standards, and we'd all be lying if we said no one breaks them. People do for economics and because they don't' care. But how the agencies police it is something else.
Divers get a questionnaire, but once they've got their cert card, do they really care about writing a negative review (if the return it at all) unless something bad has happened. It's not human nature.
Yes I think there could be improvements. I think OW should have 6 OW dives (so 5 days min) I think there should be 20 dives or 240 mins between OW and AoW, same again for rescue
I think DM should be 40 days - not 2 weeks offered by some
Some say that the 60 dives (DM) and 100 dives (Instructor) is too small - (I had 500 and 700 respectively) However to the VAST majority of divers 50 dives can seem an unobtainable target. I make 120 fun dives a year (teaching dives are extra) so that doesn't seem a lot. Someone who saves for 2 years for a family vacation and maybe fits in 10 dives would think differently
I don't have the answers, these are just my thoughts