I got baptized in the mid-90s. At that point every elder was expected to be able to hold their own in field service. About half the ministerial servants could do the same, maybe 1/2 the regular pioneers, and the odd publisher or two who was really smart but never ascended up the ranks. I'd say 20-25% of publishers could hold their own. The rest were just there to drop off magazines, count time, and run away as fast they could. I can only speak for the men since I wasn't in the habit of going out in FS with women.
By the early 00s there were already a few elders who were complete dunces, the type of men who'd been professional MS's but had been pulled up the ranks due to attrition. FS had become more nakedly a time-counting operation. A lot of the intelligent publishers with no titles simply disappeared from the map, moved away or stopped attending meetings. I estimate the number of people who could hold their own dropped to 15% or so by 2005.
After I left, things seemingly got much worse. Contemporaries of mine who were not very bright and had spent their adolescence and early adulthood being two-faces and constantly finding ways to avoid JCs started becoming MS's and elders. Men who had once been considered pillars, intelligent men who could quote hundreds of bible verses, began to drop off from the elders' list and either stopped attending or became a lot less involved than they had been. Being inquisitive seemingly went from being a virtue, a sign of someone being a deep, spiritual person, to being seen as a sign of an independent spirit and possible apostate tendencies.
