I am not involved in the decision making, so I don't know if any of these reasons came into play. In order to accomplish this we had to establish and maintain an apprentice program, and establish and maintain a mechanism for encouraging continuing education and recognizing varying degrees of accomplishment. Its possible that the change is being stimulated by Department of Labor issues and the confusion nine levels of certification create. Lets face it, if the people in DC were rocket scientists, NASA wouldn't be in Florida and Texas. If we look at our professional organization the same way other groups look at theirs, we can see that nine is a very large number of categories.
Most groups have one.
You either are, or you aren't. Lets look at medicine. There aren't different honorifics for orthopoedics or pediatrics. That wasn't done to piss off neurosurgeons. Nine is too many.