Good to hear. I certainly would not want it to be true.
But then again, a lot of things are going on in this country which I wish were not true.
When I was at prototype, it was under-staffed and backlogged. There are only so many watches the plant can support; only so many checkouts to go around. This made the beginning of being in-crew extremely frustrating. Show up early, get on the top of the check-out list. Then get kicked out immediately because we were not a certain class. "You're not the priority" we would be told. Being knowledge complete except end of cards (which were off-limits until a couple weeks before graduating), coming to work for weeks knowing that you're going to sit in a cubicle for 12 hours and cannot possibly make progress toward graduating was really annoying. Instead of finishing a month early and having August in Saratoga practically off, I graduated two months late thanks to backlogs.
Then one day it was "our turn." The skies opened up and we were put on the watchbill. Staff gave us checkouts over junior classes. And we graduated. Well, most of us...we had some FEW and board failures. It wasn't because they lowered the standard; it was because after months of studying for 12 hours a day in a cubicle and finally an opportunity to get watchstanding experience, we had the knowledge required to graduate.
What your son perceives as 'relaxing the standards' is actually his class reaping the benefits of their knowledge coming together after a year in nuclear power training and a staff that was making them the priority for checkouts and watches. It's the moment he realized that he was being expected to do what thousands upon thousands of Sailors before him did, and that it doesn't take a genious to pass the program, but just someone who knows 62.5% of the material.
The 6 month prototype training schedule planned for various phases of plant operation. Through various other factors it may have become backlogged (in my case, a training hold), and in those cases the students will be held as long as they need to graduate.
Wash, rinse, repeat.