Ryan,
You obviously belong to a very special club. As you can see from the previous posts, most instructors recent experiences are completely different.
I'm not sure how you can say there hasn't been any changes in the last 15 years, just look at the ARF market, which was very small 15 years ago. When I go to the hobby shop there are more ARF's than kits, and the ARF's sell MUCH better than the kits, even experienced modelers are buying ARF's. To show how things have changed, I know of a couple of guys that are building ARF's, instead of kits, for customers. Jeeezz.
As for kids, it's very rare to see any kid at the field that isn't the son of a member.
I guess it's different out west, but here in NJ the posts by pinball and Bill Harris pretty much sums up the state of modeling here in the northeast.
It's not a very encouraging picture.
Regards,
Jon