Greg Esres wrote:

no systematic hierarcy of academic protocols and credentials.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were? A "graduate" program for those
foolish enough to want to be career CFI's. I'd like to go to
something like TERPS school; while the real deal might be overkill,
maybe slight modification could produce highly qualified -II's.

The parts are fragmented. Procedure concepts and designs need to be
melded with aircraft performance and ATC procedures. So far as I know,
no one person or entity in the FAA has a global perspective on it all.
The air traffic procedures designers are mostly clueless as to TERPs and
the TERPs criteria designers, some of which are very good at what they
do, don't have a really good feeling for the nuances of ATC.

As an example, last August, air traffic management put out an order that
modified a section in the ATC handbook that was supposed to solve a
long-standing issue brought up before ATPAC 3 years ago concerning
clearances direct-to the intermediate waypoint of RNAV IAPs. But, the
order was very poorly written and without consulting the TERPs designers
in Flight Standards. The order was supposed to have been incorporated
formally into the "P" release of 7110.65 on February 19th. Instead, it
dropped dead without any further explanation.