I think the bottom line is this: It takes most people about 60 hours of flight time to earn their private ticket. The ground training should make the flight training time more efficient, at the very least, and CBI and sim time could/should reduce the amount of flying time necessary to earn the ticket because a cockpit is not a very good place to learn. So, if a student pilot can reduce his flight hours and therefore dollars and earn his ticket with at least as much knowledge as he could without the CBI course, then it's a good thing (on the surface). I temper this whole discussion with the firm belief that experience can be gained only in the airplane and student pilots are woefully short of experience.

Ideally, a student could use CBI/sim time to reduce his flight time and total time to get his license, then be ultra-conservative until he gains experience. But I know that in real life it doesn't always work out that way.

My $.02
John