+TSRA, My wife and I owned flight schools for 26 years, why did we sell? Well, we wanted to have some time to ourselves {getting on a bit} and quite frankly we saw the beginning of what has gone very wrong in flight training, here are a few of the reasons {1} The dead beats in TC who are just plain incompetent, not all mind you, but certainly the upper ranks just didn't have a clue about flight training. {2} When retirees from the heavy metal decided to "put something back", they were in many cases so fed up with what is being taught that they simply quit. {3} Such things as the Government of Ontario turning all flight schools/clubs in colleges {with the blessing of the director of flight training in TC} without a clue what they are doing has driven many good ones to simply shut the doors, such demands as having huge sums of money tied up in funds in case they fail, paying for full and very expensive outside audits, rather than standard business practices , even when schools only use "pay as you go" thus no student can be out of pocket should a school fail, in the mean time of shore- students who have put money up front have been cheated, but it seems they don't matter!{4}The lack of uniform standards across the nation does not make for a level playing field, in one case students at an Ontario Government school falsified flight time to obtain both funding and qualifications, no action was taken by the Government to punish both the school and the students, {cant let the public know just how corrupt and incompetent they are} had this been a private school heads would have rolled {and rightly so}{5} Look at the times to solo and to obtain a lic, if we could do it in most cases close to the minimum time why cant the rest? Oh yes, I forgot, lets mine the students for every penny! The gap between what is being taught and the real world is now so huge that its hard to find a recent grad who doesn't need re- training in the basics, Example, thirty page written checklists in a single engine, fixed gear piston trainers, totally bloody stupid! But the thing which upsets me the most is these overweight instructors with their bloody silly gold bars have taken the joy and fun out of learning to fly!