Has this thread drifted to ATPL bashing? Great!
My no. 1 problem with the EASA/CAA system is a complete lack of clarity and a mismatch between what is taught and what is tested.
The FAA has a simple system that works: the FAA thenselves publish a series of handbooks telling you everything you need to know. Then the FAA give you a written and verbal test only on stuff that is in that book. No teach - no test.
The CAA/EASA publish a very vague list of learning objectives upon which they will test. The various training organisations have to essentially guess what they have to teach based solely on feedback leading to
huge volumes of material and pointless questions like who walks the ICAO Presidents dog.
A fATPL holder might know the orbital height and inclination of a GPS satellite but have no idea how that data is presented in the cockpit. It would be much more useful to know 100% of a relevant volume of information than 75% of a largely irrelevant volume of information.