If you are not in aisle 3 in ML (and it sounds like you may not be), I would suggest that you may not be in the best position to talk about the goings-on in our part of the world. If you go back 10 trainees in our aisle, you would be going back 2 years at least - in that time, there have been less than a handful fail, including one who 'self-scrubbed' the morning of his check. Those who passed include two ab-initios who passed on what is still one of the hardest groups in the centre (if not the entire country!)
Curious as to what experience you have that you can compare one group's workload with that of others in the centre (if not the entire country)?
How many enroute radar, enroute procedural, TCUs, radar/non-radar Towers have you worked?
I've worked a good mix of enroute sectors, but Approach was another step up entirely.