As I mentioned much earlier in this thread, we need realistic expectations. The majority of dive-professionals these days make so little money they're effectively working for free. Diving is another one of those professions, where there are enough people who love doing it enough they'd do it for almost-free, that companies are more than will exploit that. Many things within scuba are expensive from a customer-perspective, but I'm pretty sure only the dive-agencies are sitting comfortable. I totally get why, because I've even considered the idea of being an instructor-assistant for free, given my day-job pays many times what I could ever hope to earn in SCUBA. Except, there's no chance I'm going to make someone else money off my free labor.
I think maybe something I'd like to see a little more of, which might help both those who are in it "for the love," and those who want to learn, is dive-tutoring. At minimum, no middle-man is taking a cut. Something I might do when I am more experienced though, is offer nearly-free tutoring, for just the cost of my expenses like tank-fills.
edit: Based on some brief research, it appears the "e-learning" portion of classes is approximately half the cost of many classes. The remaining half is divided between the dive-shop and the instructor(s).