Those with a sense of history may recall that the syllabus minimum for a RPPL was 33 hours. We used to quote around 40hours as that is what experience showed was a reasonable time period.
Following pressure from the sports aircraft lobby this was reduced to 20 hours for a GFPT. The logic being that if you could handle a glider or an ultralight why should you have to meet the 33 hour minimum in "real" aircraft.
Nothing was removed from the syllabus, although I think the solo requirement dropped from 10 to 5 hours. So we now had to cover the same material in effectively 8 less hours. (33-5-20) It was/is unrealistic.
Of course now when a prospective student turns up they are fixated on 20 hours. I am sure CFI will agree that one of the first questions she has to answer is how many hours will it take? To which one response is " well how good do you want to be"
Final thought from the car modification crowd. The sign on the workshop wall says.."Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?" Perhaps we could modify this for flight training. " High Quality Flight Training costs money, how long do you want to live?"