However spending all my time sitting next to the new SO's that are coming into the airline, I have noticed a very large drop in standard. half of them cant make a HF radio call, which is just as important today as 10 years ago. and a lot of the SOs im flying with now just don't care.
Unfortunately that has little to do with experience levels because as you rightly say, they just don't care. Having a little more experience they likely still won't care.