It appears to me that at least a large minority of them aren't written by an "ignorant newbie" but by a "smart newbie." Each and every one of them is one more problem that some wikipedian has to deal with. Seems to me like the whole AFC thing has just managed to move the problem to another place. AFC = AFD in reverse.
No, the great thing about AfC is no one has to deal with it at all. If we stopped working on AfC, then Wikipedia would simply lose a little bit of growth. By contrast, if we stopped working on AfD, then Wikipedia would fairly dramatically fill up with total crud.
By and large, AfC is a lot less work for any given article than AfD is. "Bad" AfCs can simply be ignored. "Good" ones take a couple of minutes, but at least we end up with a useful, well-formatted article out of the deal.
I think you are suffering from the My Perspective is the Only One that Counts syndrome. Try submitting a few articles to AFC as an anon user and then tell us how nice it is.