I think a lot of folks are still spending significant amounts on different aspects of what we loosely term 'bushcraft'.
And a lot of other folks have had to reduce their spending massively as disposable income becomes more challenging to find these days.
For example, more and more folks are getting 'into the primitive' and interest in paleo hunter gatherers and their methods is steadily gaining in popularity, which kind of flies right in the face of your ventile/firesteel crowd, since the paleo folks go down the hand/bow drill or fire plough route and don't so much treat a firesteel with disdain - it more or less has little or no place in their particular slant on bushcraft.
That's not a dig at ventile, firesteels or those who own them (me for one, although the firesteel I carry has never actually been used) but I think the market that once struggled to keep pace with demand has now exceeded it slightly, especially given the current financial climate.
I can't comment on whether or not the Woodlore courses are worth the money, never having been on one, but I would say that if the paleo approach is what blows your skirt up then a Woodlore course would hold little appeal while other courses run by non-Woodlore yet still highly skilled people might be far more relevant.
Put it like this - from speaking with a lot of folks who practice bushcraft or make a living from it, most of them have the utmost respect for Ray Mears and what he has achieved but they wouldn't necessarily choose one of his school's courses over any other just because of his association with it.
There are also only so many people who want to go on any given course offered by any particular school - sooner or later you need to diversify the course structure or find an alternative way of reaching a greater audience somehow.
The same thing happened in the 80's and 90's - survival schools were popping up left right and centre, and then started disappearing as the market became more challenging.
Some of this is simply a numbers game, both in terms of cost and in terms of students wanting that kind of course.
Just my thoughts, largely based on educated ?!?! guesswork and absolutely no hard evidence