Dumbing down has a lot to do with it too. Minimum educational qualifications for consideration were 5 good "O" levels including Maths, Physics & English Language. Two further subjects were required at "A" level. Remember, these were the good old GCE certificates. Much, much harder than the GCSE of today.
Then, you had a fiercely competitive selection procedure. If you got past all that, you still had to perform at a high level throughout the course. Within the course, we really did do spinning, stalling, spiral dives, steep turns & recovery from unusual attitudes. Not quite as exciting as Arfur's jet provost but I can tell you that the Cherokee 140 was a pig to get into a spin and I remember my arse pointing at the sky too ! The Tech standard at Hamble was so high that a "Frozen " ATPL was issued. Finally, at least 4000 hours was required by most companies before a LHS selection and training was ever, even, looked at.
Now, compare that with the standards today and I agree with Arfur Dent & his argument concerning the Management issue which has lowered standards, encouraged P2fly , in the name of cost reduction and you have the scenario of today.
Don't get me started on the technology either. Airbus crashed a A320 while demonstrating how good it was ! People today really do think that they are "flying" the plane when they knock out the autopilot and "disconnect" the autothrottle. Yeah right. Throttles that don't even move !
Solution ? Easy. High level of selection and training followed by years and years and thousands of hours of monitoring and continuation training. Of course it won't happen. Bean counters with easy to get correspondence course qualifications will tell you that it costs too much. Discussion over.