ericferret....I agree with most of what you say.
Of course those who attend the JAR147 superstores are only taking advantage of the system as it exists today (and who can blame 'em?!)
What concerns me is that very few of those who I have encountered studying for modules today actually seriously try and learn the subjects! At work I have watched several guys using one of the popular on-line question banks to "revise"! They all seem fixated on learning the actual questions rather than doing a little more work and trying to understand the topic. When the failure letters arrive in the post (as they invariably do) the most common comment is along the lines of "I'd never seen that question/s before!" Usually, most end up flexing their credit cards and heading for one of the JAR147 courses as its now common knowledge that there is usually a limited amount of studying required!
Of course there is always going to compromises when it comes to studying for license exams but I always tried at least to get an understanding of the subject. It certainly helped when it came to answering some of the more cryptic questions and saved a few re-sits!